The term animatronics refer mainly to movie making.
It is based on having some objects moving in front of a video camera.
During the early days of the movie industry, animatronics were so simple and just included some special effects and that was due to many reasons:

• There was a limited technique available for the animator to use since there was a limited or even no use of the computer which added a lot of programs to this industry nowadays.
  
• Animations were mainly dependent on the live objects such as humans and animals; and that required a lot of costly preparations to get one single fascinating shot and also a lot of care was needed during the shot taking for not exposing the actor to any dangerous situations.
  A simple shot for a flying actor, for example, required many expensive heavy duty techniques to be used for just only a 10 second shot and that would be a lot of money, time and effort waste.
  
• Only limited materials were available in the hands of the designers and so there were only limited choices for a movie shot to have.
  Much mold was impossible to be made because of the lack of tools, raw materials and imaginative ideas.
  

That was in the past.
Great revolutionary changes have happened since then and almost everything is now possible to be done to get a perfect animated shot without even changing the location of the camera.
The progress in the computer technology widely affected this industry.
Sometimes, you may wonder whether the computer inventor has created it just for the movie making industry and this is relatively correct because there are wide varieties of computer programs that facilitate the drawing of any imaginary character and also widen the designer's eyes on new creative ideas.
Even more than that, so many animation programs were produced to add many effects on the shot been screened.
The props are one of the movie parts that have been affected by this new technology.
It has even exceeded the old term of just having some pieces of furniture or clothing to become a whole scene environment.
Instead of having a movie screened in a landscape, for example, with all the difficulties of relocating the whole equipment and people, just a simple landscape background from a computer may be added to the scene.
The computer programs are not the only new reason for the movie industry revolution.
The industrial raw materials for arts have also become more convenient and available than before and most of them can be molded easily at low cost.