Giant Fog-Breathing Robotic Crow Shoots Lasers

Artist David Cranmer built something truly terrifying.

Stakcgrox is a 3.5 meter tall robotic crow with glowing eyes and a rotating head that shoots lasers. (Yep, you read that right.)

To build the giant crow-of-doom, Cranmer used a variety of different materials and techniques. The frame is welded steel tubing, and the general form was given more definition using plywood, strips of aluminum, and a layer of fiberglass. A large stepper motor with sprocket and chain rotates the massive head, while another stepper opens and closes the beak. There is also a guitar amp inside the bird which blasts audio samples when the beak opens.

While Cranmer doesn’t go into specifics about the electronics, a number of different boards were used to control the behavior of the crow, including an Adafruit Wave Shield, Adafruit 16 channel servo driver, several Arduinos, and a custom PCB to drive the sequenced LEDs in the head.

Thankfully,Cranmer took a decent amount of photos (and even some video) during his build process, so you can see the various pieces come together into the finished sculpture. Be sure to check out the full build on David’s website, along with all of his other crazy sculptures!