Small robots are cool, big robots are awesome.

A few years ago, I met this cool guy, who happens to be a wonderful artist : Romain Lardanchet.
He does these sculptures where he takes parts of scooters / motorbikes / quad, re-interpret them to look like living thing, a process he calls "mechamorphosis" ^^.

When I met him, he had this awesome 3m long mechanical panther with him, Agheera. The idea to work together on making something like that move immediately came to mind, sparks flew, and a year and a half later (December 2013), when we finally could find some time off from the rest of our busy lives, we started working on something together.

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The result is Aringer, a saber-tooth tiger with an animated head. He did the body, we made the head together, and another talented friend made the beast purr, growl and roar.
3m long, 1.5m high and 1.2m wide, it's more or less the size of a horse, and can be ridden :)

WARNING annoying sound, turn your speakers down.

Head motino test

The head can move left and right, the 2 pairs of ears move up or down (a little like the beasts in Avatar!), the eyes glow, the lips move up and down. The "breathing" of the gills-like things was removed later due to the annoying sound.

Reaction test

The head moves left and right to follow the people in front of it thanks, and it will have different behaviors depending on the distance of the closest obstacle, from purring to threatening growl, to full on roaring for intimidation!

There is also a sort of easter egg for people who happen to take a photo with the flash:

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The body is covered with patterns made with black retro-reflective tape. They light up but the effect can only be seen from the point of origin of the light, so only the person with the flash will see it :)

Romain (the artist) website: http://www.romainlardanchet.com/
Jean Charles (the sound creator) website: http://www.silenceprod.com/
More technical details on the Trossen Robotics Forum