My project : control a puppet with arduino and kinect

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello everybody,

I am a puppeter and I work in a famous theater. I make an exhibition with puppetry and numeric art.
I would like to make an installation where the people interact with their body to manipulate a puppet.
I'm new in Arduino. I would like to know if it's possible ? I think yes and i would like to know the way to proceed. I have a big budget for my exhibition. I would like a puppet with human size.
If I understand good. My kinnect will be rely to my computer, using some software the movement of the visitor will be change in information data. This information will be send to arduino card and this last one send the order to servos.
This is that i understand (Maybe i dont understand ?).
I would like to know if someone can tell me which software i need. If it's working with all the kinnect version. If they have another system easier to do that. If someone know where i can find servos with big weight capacity.

Thank you for your help ! It's very important for me...

Best regards

Antonin

2

There was a blog post on arduino.cc about the same subject. This group of students (probably from India) controlled a robotic arm with kinetic and arduino. Your understanding seems correct. Servos aren't rated by weight. They are rated by torque and possibly side-load capacity. I thought that a puppet is supported by some framework and one only needs to pull strings. If you pull strings with servos, you don't need a lot of torque. Get something from ebay and try it out. Hope the seller lists torque so you will be able to determine if your setup needs more torque than the first servo you get.