Animatronic Iron Man Suit Feasibility

I am completely new to Arduino and am looking to see if it would work (or if it’s even possible) for an idea I thought up for adding animatronics to an Iron Man suit I am currently building. I was hoping to use a small Arduino connected to servos to open/close the helmet faceplate and to run the LED lights in the eyes. I was thinking of using some type of RFID/NFC tag system in the helmet to start the relative sequences in a wireless and easy approach.

My thought was to have an antenna on each side of the helmet connected to a single Arduino that works like so:

  1. If I touch the tag on the right side of the helmet the servos will close the faceplate and then turn on the LED PCB in the eyes

  2. If I touch a tag on the left side of the helmet the LED’s will turn off and the servos will open the faceplate

I am assuming a single tag could not be used to do both tasks using a single antenna (i.e. touch once and sequence A runs, touch again and sequence B runs)

Thank You
I hope I made some sort of sense and anyone could help guide me in the right direction and if it is at all feasible.

Most RFID systems would not read very well through a (distance equivalent to a) persons head, so I think you'd need separate readers on each side. In this case it would be fine to use the same tag on both sides, as the logic depends on which side reads the tag. Two readers within 20cm of each other might cause some interference. It might be desirable to power them alternately rather than both simultaneously.

If you wound your own coil for an ID02, you might get reasonable readings on both sides. A coil could be mounted inside the mask, canted so that it passes on one side of the eyes and on the other side of the neck.

All of this would require trying it to see what works.

There was another person who made a Iron man helmet where the face plate opens and closes. I can't find the post, but i'm sure its here somewhere. Found it, LINK

Anyway, I was thinking maybe you can use a capacitive touch sensor on the outside of the helmet to activate the helmet. Its looks better then a normal button, but then again, anyone can use/touch it. If this is not a problem then give it a try.

The code is simple, the only thing you need to worry about is where your going to fit everything and still make it look good. You might be able to do everything with an ATtiny (which one exactly, im not sure) which will allow you to compact everything into a small space.

Have a look at the animatronic system I created for my friend's MkIII suit here-

It uses RFID tags in the gloves to control all of the suit functions and the helmet is wireless.