Inspired by Pixar, animatronic ‘Pinokio’ desk lamp tracks movements, reacts to environment

It’s hard to look at Pinokio, an animatronic lamp that responds to its surroundings, and not think of Pixar’s logo; sure enough, its creators modeled their work after the Luxo lamp made famous by the animation studio. Hacked together by Shanshan Zhou, Adam Ben-Dror and Joss Doggett, Pinokio incorporates a webcam, mic, mechanical iris, servos, and a halogen globe in its advanced construction. From there, the group relies on Arduino, OpenCV, and plenty of code to give the lamp its impressive head-tracking and motion capabilities.