Pinoky - transform a soft toy to a robot

 Japanese design researchers have created a simple ring-like device called Pinoky that can be used to animate your soft toys, causing them to "come to life" with robotic gestures.
The rings can be clipped onto your favourite teddy's limbs, ears, tail or any other body part and then operated remotely. The one drawback is they do have potential to look a little like instruments of torture, no matter how candy-like the colours they come in.
Pinoky -- created by a combined team from Keio University and the University of Tokyo -- is part of the Igarashi Design Interface Project, which aims to develop computational systems that cultivate people's creativity by supporting their self-expression through digital media and real world objects.
Each ring contains a microcontroller, a Zigbee wireless microchip, a battery, servo motor, a sensor to detect the angle at which the joint is bent and a couple of magnets to clasp around the toy's limb.

 

Once clamped over the part of the toy that you want to animate, the servo motors move that part back and forth by pushing into it repeatedly, creating an impromptu joint which then waves or wiggles.

There are a number of interesting functions including a "record and play back" mode, which lets you manipulate the toy's body part manually while it's wearing the Pinoky. Once it's recorded the action it will replay it on its own by manipulating the limb in the same way. There is also a synchronisation function, which allows you to coordinate two of the devices (which could be placed on different toys or just on different limbs).