User:LoveMango/ENES-100/Project 2: The Bio-Inspired Robot

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Week0 Preferences
I'm working with

Jovy, Edward, and Hassan to produce a bio-inspired robot.

The team's been brainstorming ideas on what our robot should be inspired by and we finally settled on the idea of a snake robot.

The snake has to be manufactured with the Makerbot so it has to be 1) small enough & 2) time-efficient when it comes to printing the pieces.

Also it has to move and sense objects on it's own.

Right now our main priority is designing the snake and making it wiggle.

Week1 Narrative
I've been doing a lot of research with Jovy on snake designs and what not. Currently, Jovy, Ed, & Hassan are printing out the current lollipop design for the first prototype snake.

I'm still looking into the ring design and observing snake anatomy. I'm also preparing to look into the servo motor and think of a way of using it with the lollipop design. I'll probably do a tutorial or two over the weekend.

The skeleton should allow for: 1 Looking like a life like snake 2 Wiggling 3 Rearing the head 4 Moving forwards 5 Moving to the side

For Week 2 I'll probably be 1) Looking into 3d designs for joints and how to apply that to a snake skeleton like structure as well as 2) Looking into servo motors and how they can be applied to snake-like movement.

Week2 Narrative
Aside from looking up tutorials on joints and things of the like, I've been getting familiar with the Servo motor.

I've been tweaking the "Sweep" sketch in various ways.

Together, with Jovy, we built this sort of robo snake skin prototype with paper that I've been attaching the the motor in various ways to observe movement.

Week3 Narrative
I got sick and ended up not getting much done this week.

http://www.cs.nyu.edu/mishra/NOTES/AlgorithmicAlgebraMishra.pdf (<--note to self. ignore it.)

Week4 Narrative
So in the Week 2 fiddling days, I got the snake prototype to rear it's head using a servo motor. But I'm not quite sure how the choppy and limited device will be able to sufficiently propel the snake forward.

I decided a few well programmed chips and a single DC brushless motor would help the cause.

I thought about the way the snake moves in that video Jovy uploaded on her project page. It seemed to bend a certain way the same way every time. There were two main curves that the snake reared it's head to maneuver around in it's S shape. The front half of it's body would contract and curve to the right, while the rear half would relax and curve to the opposite direction. Then, each half of the snake would trade functions.

We've revamped the prototype cardboard snake structure, giving it a paper, tape, and string structure. There are cardboard cylindrical rings strung together to mimic the skin and body of the snake. I used tape over the connecting string to make a flexible bone structure between the cardboard skin structures. I used pieces of a plastic party cup to make loop holes on either side of the connected cardboard tubes to secure the string.

My goal in this is just to make it wiggle.

Then, to encourage forward movement, maybe attach a plastic cup cover to promote a slippery motion, like what is in the process of being made on the Makerbot. I want to add more segments to the snake and place a servo motor somewhere to make the "head" of the snake rise.

UPDATE 12/5:

I figured out a trick involving the DC brushless motor, some string, and a little bit of double-sided tape that I think may help replicate the muscle contraction movement. Will update soon.

Thinking of a way to make the DC motor run off a AA battery and a shift register like chip, since I'm guessing the Really Bare Bones cannot handle both a servo motor and a DC brushless.