hypothetical ultimate suit

[typingwithpaws]

not sure if i am posting in the right section so i invite a kind mod to move if needed.

anyway, given unlimited funds, how and what would you like to build into your own fursuit?

since the ability to easily and feasibly be able to tap into the human neural interface is not really an option, i would like to place senders and proximity switches on a mask for my face.
these sensors would record muscle movement.

eg, i can wiggle my ears backwards, use quiet servo drives or solenoids to move fursuits ears back flat to swivel in a particular direction. A proximity switch could detect weather my tongue was poking out or not and allow the suit to mimik the movement. eyebrows, eyelids, nose and other movements could be tracked and replicated.

ive had a little experience with small quiet Servo drives and Proc switches etc and just wanted to share my ideas.
i reckon it'd be AWESOME!!!

comments or anything else to add?

paws

[Cheet.I.Ahhh]

Voice masking hardwired into my full-length Cheetah suit... that's all this cat would want 

[Chiscringle]

1. Thermal diode mesh connected to external heat sinks in the bodysuit and head.
2. Voice hardware that can change and broadcast.
3. Cameras and screens in the eyes so that the suit's eyes move as mine do and I suffer no loss of vision.
4. High quality fur fabric that stretches to be skintight
5. A tail connected with a nerve interface (a biomedical engineering grad designed and built this for his dissertation).
6. Necomimi ears (uses brainwave scanner to control ears).
7. Wings controlled by a Kamen control chip.

Not necessarily all in the same suit.

[redyoshi49q]

5. A tail connected with a nerve interface (a biomedical engineering grad designed and built this for his dissertation).

Any chance you have a link?

[Kobuk]

If I had unlimited funds........or won a lottery  .........I'd hire a Hollywood special effects (SFX) team make a realistic wolf suit for me. 

4. High quality fur fabric that stretches to be skintight

Very high quality.......and very expensive.
http://www.nftech.com/

[Chiscringle]

Kobuk: Just the people I was thinking of.

redyoshi49q: Unfortunately I lost it, but if you look up noninvasive bmi on Google, possibly adding the word 'limb' to it, you can get some interesting results of more recent research.  A skin-contact sensor that can detect the signals or actual activity of muscles in ones buttocks would do the job.

[typingwithpaws]

cool Cringle 

what about a heat exchanger setup for those candids.
skin contact small plumbing with a very low viscosity coolant, direct this to the fursuits tongue then use a form of evaporative cooling.

nice fur Kobuk 

[Storm Fox]

5. A tail connected with a nerve interface (a biomedical engineering grad designed and built this for his dissertation).

Any chance you have a link?

redyoshi49q: Unfortunately I lost it, but if you look up noninvasive bmi on Google, possibly adding the word 'limb' to it, you can get some interesting results of more recent research.  A skin-contact sensor that can detect the signals or actual activity of muscles in ones buttocks would do the job.

Would this be what you two have been talking about?
Electromyographic Bionic Tail by Wolf Tronix.

[typingwithpaws]

that's awesome Silver 
i think i may be capable of making something like that one day!! epic win.

[Chiscringle]

That's the critter.  It must have been a long time ago that I last saw that site because now I understand everything written.  So it isn't a BMI, but a BMI would be a more effective solution, though a more expensive one.

[Sk Skunk]

Realistic skunk quad, nose to tail accurate.    It may require some remote sensing devices to be able to drive the thing.

[Mylo]

... to drive the thing.

 

When you said that, I imagined a stiff quadruped skunk that had wheels on his paws, like this:



As for my ultimate suit, I would want to find a way to adjust expressions on the face (not just ear movement).  I'd want it to be absolutely form-fitting, and I'd like the tail to be activated by thought, like stated above in this thread. 

[Storm Fox]

that's awesome Silver 

Silver…? ? ?

[silverfox]

My hypothetical ultimate?  It must be/have:

• Form fitting
• Realistically formed foot-paws (overall realistic suit)
• Cooling
• Animatronic ears/tail/face (whatever can be done)
• Neck floof (see any Scribble Fox suit)

What can I say? I'm a sucker for realism and not dying

[Rocket T. Coyote]

Cooling undergarment similar to those worn by astronauts.

Eyelids which blink or open/close as my own.

Tail which lifts/droops/wags to reflect mood.

Positionable ears.

Muzzle changes expression to reflect mood.

Self-inflation/deflation feature. (Attempted to blow up balloon. Menthos Experiment, CPR gone wrong, etc.)

Footpaws built on air-cushion athletic shoes for comfort and endurance.

Voice/audio circuitry to project a toony voice or barks/yips depending on hidden switch settings.

[Jordie]

Ah... Animatronic tails reminded me of this...

http://www.techinasia.com/japanese-cat-ears-necomimi/

These are animatronic ears that somehow respond to the wearer's brainwaves and go up or down according to mood/state of mind, eg. they go up when the wearer is alert, down if depressed, etc.

From what I can tell, they're not too expensive either! They're cat ears, but I guess they could just as easily be fox ears or dog ears.

[Chiscringle]

See point six on my first post.

Oi loike yur quote, boi the way.

[Avan]

A proper azarian host body. 

Nearly-everything-proof, able to survive or at least endure just about any environment (designed to put cockroaches to shame), vast number of cellular & sub-cellular scale improvements, heavily redundant systems, physically maximized brainpower, advanced senses, easily enhanced with azarian cybernetics, oligomorphic, mental-level epigenetic control, capable of being upgraded, can be replaced if damaged beyond repair, capable of duplicating itself, among a bunch of other things.

[Leeseetsa]

Umm.... hypothetically? I would pay for someone to help bring my fursona to life. Not that I don't love the mascot fursuiters out there (You guys keep the furry world spinning!), but I was thinking something a little different for good ol' Molly Leeseetsa Chay. Namely, gelatin prosthetics instead of a suit head (I would have to attach it to some form of frame, though. Still thinking that one out.) This would be followed by a skin-tight fursuit that had various "sections" (like, the sleeves to the actual suit would end at the shoulder, but there would be an upper arm piece and a fore arm piece), and what wasn't furry after putting on the suit? I would use crepe hair (http://www.mehron.com/Crepe_Hair_p/120.htm), preferably all white. I would then spray in my desighns, and use a makeup sealant and some spray-in conditioner to give it that fluffy feel. Whabam! in costume.

Now... the process I mentioned above would take..... oh, in the neighborhood of four hours to finish? Hence the extra set of hands.

[Kobuk]

The only way anybody will get a hypothetically ultimate realistic suit is:
* Design and build it yourself including all electronics, servos, etc.
* Hire a Hollywood SFX movie team to make it for you. (Lots of $$$$$$$)
* Wait anywhere from 5-20+ years for science, engineering, medical, and tech to advance to the point where movable tails, ears and other realistic features are more possible.

Or, you're just going to have to settle your hopes and dreams a little lower with what fursuit makers there currently are in the fandom that can do realistic stuff. Some samples are:
LatinVixen (Mixedcandy)
Beastcub Creations
Beetlecat
Clockwork Creature Studio
Primal Visions
Lion of the Sun

[tinka]

Does one actually need an 'ultimate' fursuit?

A fursuiter without animatronics or even mechanical moving parts - can still express themselves - through their voice, through hand and body gestures and overall movements.

Does it diminish the array of possibilities for expression?

The person seeing it certainly has no problem projecting emotions he feels - even to a physically static face (even a line drawing will do).

It is considered an essential part of an actors education - to work with masks - see history of french theater since 1913 - Copeau: "telling a story is more important - then presentation of 'self' in the performance"

Just like is happening with animation - where ever more elaborate presentations are constructed around realistic looking graphics - we forget that people could just as well relate to the first cartoons ever made - line drawings with simple features with the same level of emotion...

Where as the muppets were inanimate except for some mouth movements mostly - we're still able to empathize and project the emotions from the story to their faces - and enjoy the experience - even though there is nothing there really but bunch of 'fabric gloves' moving around a bit.

There is so much you can do with a simple suit - that should not be the limit to your self-expression.

But sorry for the digression.

I will now provide you with the ultimate state of the art suit.

I would attach 1D and 2D MEMS accelerometers to the face and part of the body. These are small, light, yet very sensitive and consume very little power. Each one is tracing a certain muscle movement on their face or on their body which the fursuiter can consciously and accurately control easily (or with some practice). We'll come to the calibration later.

The sensors themselves aren't expensive. Nor are the signal processing electronics required. It is the programming that is the greatest expense. We need to process only the minimum amount of spectrum of the amplitudes and frequencies - turn them into tables - that a DSP+FPGA CPU(s) will then process. We want to implement the algorithms in such as a way that we can alter the amplitude response as well as the orientation/direction sensitivity later on - simply by altering the coefficients of the algorithm (which are not implemented as static logic).

Now we have a pretty good sensor-array that responds to the movements that the fursuiter can control. For example he might move his nose up and down slightly. A sensor there will simply transform that movement to a signal with a range and direction and we can decide what it controls and how. It could for example move the tail (although that would not be intuitive). We could instead place sensors at the back-side of the fursuiter and have him move the tail simply by clenching his buttocks a bit. We can cater to all preferences.

Now, rest is really just animatronics - which is actually the simple part - but unfortunately also expensive - because there are no 'generic' micro-servo-mechanisms for each part of the fursuit. They all need to be custom made for each specific part and for each specific movement. Ones you build the suit - the 'tracks' or 'trajectories' of the movements are fixed - only their amplitude and direction can be calibrated through software.

Now comes the fun part. The fursuiter himself could them adjust each 'gesture' to whatever movement he wants - by manipulating a 'calibration software' where a 3D computer model image of the face/suit would replicate each adjustment made. Through trial-and-error the fursuiter could then connect and calibrate each sensor or sensor array - to any part of the fursuit animatronics - and fine tune and practive the movements.

So in summary:
- MEMS sensors are very cheap already and are getting cheaper through mass production
- software is the most important and most expensive part - this and general development costs - they are always going to be expensive (unless you manage to fund an open-source project and just fund the hardware)
- motors and actuators are just as expensive as ever due to custom designs required***

***the only thing that might make animatronic gear cheaper - very soon - is 3D-printing - which is getting cheaper - and which can produce complex but customizable parts for to the build and adapt animatronics (you still the actual armature/rotor/actuator-part. There's no way to print that presently)

[kuroneko jusan]

In reference to Tinka's post as well as the many of you who mentioned Nekomimi ears may I offer you this link
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13390
For those of you that are more savvy with programming, I can see this setup being co-opted into running not only ears but tail movements as well...