Wynn
2012
Giant puppets for the Wynn Casino, Las Vegas.
Concept
Bot & Dolly was enlisted to help create new content for the Wynn Casino’s Lake of Dreams attraction, a nightly show involving lights, music, giant puppets, and a 40-foot waterfall.
The project presented unique challenges. The show’s existing puppets—highly-customized industrial robots running legacy software—had originally been outfitted by a third-party robotics integrator.
We migrated the show to our animation toolset and motion control runtime, and animated two new sequences for the nightly show.
Technology
This project began by extending our automation toolset to support the extant components of the show: industrial robots with custom 20-foot links, pneumatically-controlled props, and automation cues driving lifts and other mechanisms.
We took special care to model both kinematics and simplified dynamics for the custom robot hardware, allowing the show’s creative team to program new content more efficiently.
On-site, we worked closely with show technicians, deciphered 10-year-old wiring diagrams, and updated robot controller cabinets with the components necessary to run an updated runtime.
Process
Our runtime controls the legacy pneumatic linear actuators over EtherCAT—after much deciphering of spec sheets.
A mobile app controls the same pneumatics—now attached to a prop.
One of the two behemoth robots responsible for flying the props.