Group 068-05: Animatronic Puppets

        This week was our final presentations and showing off our prototype designed through the ten weeks. In the video below you will see how Ethan walks up to the IR sensor to activate the design. Once the IR sensor activated, multiple things are initiated: the motors start to spin pushing the face forward and opening and closing the jaw, the TV light turns on (hard to see in the video due to lighting), and the sound plays.         We completed our goal but would change some things going forward. One major thing is we would get a faster and more powerful motor to propel the face. We would also go about changing the size and shape of the face to make it more visible as well as changing the elastic material to show more detail.

        Over the past few weeks the group has been mostly split between people working on the coding to work with the electronics, and the others building the framework and the parts that will move. This week the project seemed to really be coming together, the electronics and the framework was being put together.         After stressful weeks of spending hours on coding, we finally got the motors to run with the IR sensor to get the whole system to be initiated when people walk in front of it. With the IR sensor working and the motor working, we started on the peripherals: lights and sound. The light was up and running quickly, the sound will hopefully be working by next week. The final circuitry and code is shown below. This ended up taking much longer than we had anticipated.      Now that the face was finished being glued and dried, we put it on the support system to finish all the parts on the linear actuator. Once that was s...

After weeks of problems with getting the motor to run, we finally got it. We are having problems getting it to run with the IR sensor. Since the face was finally finished printing, we started gluing all the pieces together. We just have to wait for all the pieces to dry. The only two things left for the actuator are the motor, which we have partially working, and attaching the belt to the base-plate and motor. Once that is set we can add the face to the actuator and set up the moving jaw. We finished the TV so once all the pieces and parts are working, we should have a working design.

After finally getting the stepper motor to work last week, this week it was not running. We need to go back and figure out what is going wrong. We tried setting it up again like last week and running the code, nothing. We tried numerous set-ups and could not get the stepper motor to spin. We are working with the professor to figure it out. First, we tried resoldering the connections, that did not work. We tried different wiring, different coding, nothing would work. We also worked more on the actuator and the TV frame. Once we get the motors running, we can hook it up to the actuator, attach the belt, and then it should be working properly. We are hoping to have the actuator running by next week.

This week we did two very important things: started building the actuator and got the stepper motor running, finally. It took a couple of weeks but we finally are able to run the motor. On top of being able to run it, we figured out how to control the speed and direction which will help us controlling the actuator once its running. Since we finally had all the parts we needed for the actuator, we started building it. We put the linear bearings on a mount and aligned them so that they were parallel. We started to build clamps to hold the rods down but did not finish cutting them. We also made the decision to not cover the whole frame in wood. To make it easier for us and to make the internals more accessible once build, we decided we would cover it on cardboard. The first picture is the beginning of the actuator which we completed this week. The second picture is a rough sketch of the TV frame with the cardboard and also sketch of the wiring and what we used to get the stepper mot...

We started to print the face, we have to print it out in small tiny blocks an then put it all together. It will end up being 15 pieces. After finishing the CAD design for the TV, we started building it. We had to get wood from Home Depot. We cut out the front frame of the TV, but that was all we got started with. It took all of class to cut it since we made a mistake. We easily fixed the mistake with glue, so it was not a big problem. Again, we did not have the pieces we wanted for the linear actuator; we are hoping to have them by week 6. Soldering the stepper motor controller and trying to get it to work was unsuccessful. We hope to have that done by the time the pieces for the linear actuator is built

This week we split up an did a couple of things. Since the face is finished, we wanted to print it. Originally we were told that the volume, mostly the length and width, could fit the whole face. Then we were told that we couldn't. So, we had to come up with a way to print the face in smaller parts in order to fit the constraints of the printers we are allowed to use. The design for the TV frame was also started. We want this to look like an older TV. To make the design for the face movement, we have to make a linear actuator. We need to know how to control the stepper-motor required for movement. We worked on the coding and circuitry needed to make it work. As for building it, we got parts, but some of them were not what they said they were and we had to send them back. This set us back and we were not happy. The 3-D CAD design for the face we are printing.

Continuing with last week, we thought of new ideas on how to push the face through the Lycra sheet. We decided to go with a linear actuator (Figure 1). We are hoping that this is more easy to control and build than a crank or screw mechanism. We spent a lot of time looking up different builds, making it easy to build and keeping cost down. Once we finalized the idea and researched the parts, we ordered what we needed. While many of us were working on the linear actuator, Nick Locantore started working with the Arduino, getting an understanding of how to use it for later. Along with this, we started testing the motors and servos provided. We are provided with small DC motors, which do not provide enough power to do what we need. After talking with the professor, he decided he would by some stepper motors for the class (NEMA17 Stepper motor 1.8 degrees step / 4.8 kg/cm). These stepper motors will hopefully provide us with enough power, we will have to test them once we have them...

During week two, there were a few things we wanted to get completed: draw out our ideas more, get our ideas from this week and last week in the design notebook, and start making the face. We started by sketching our very rough ideas in our design notebook, no measurements, just ideas. Originally, our idea was to have a face mounted on a crank which would push the face horizontally through the Lycra sheet. After sketching it out in the design notebook we realized it was more complicated that it needed to be. Upon realizing this, we started thinking about other ideas. There were ideas like a screw-like mechanism on each corner and would spin and a sheet of wood with the face which would move forward, we could put the whole thing on a track and have it drive forwards, maybe using some sort of pulley system or springs; we are still unsure which idea we would like to use. We were going to talk to our professor about it, but he left class early and we were unable to reach him. The face, w...

        Our goal, create a machine to put in a kids haunted maze. During week one, we were supposed to make groups, set up our blog, start thinking of ideas, and start our proposal. First, we got a group together. After forming our groups we got started thinking of ideas to design, set up communication, and set up our needed materials. There were two main ideas: a teddy bear which would look normal at first, then it would say hug me and as someone got close it would start to scream, the other idea was to have an arm that would come out of a TV (Figure 1), like the monster in Stranger Things. After talking some more, we decided to change the arm to a head that will pop out. Once we settled on the idea, we started to talk about how we would go about designing and building the animatronic puppet. We started talking and researching products we would need to complete the idea we talked about. Once we had our basic idea, we started on our working on our proposal. Figure...