Group 068-05: Animatronic Puppets

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...