Evander Batson
xinhe feng
FluffyLeecy
frankiezek
gaboratparsons
giang063
gracegotlost
lauriewaxman
Siwen Li
Tim Xiaofeng Lin
Yury Gitman
mar28th
Max(TONG WEN)
Soohyun
sabotai
Susan Lin
Past assignments
Pyramid Lifter + Range Finder + Servo
Midterm (it was supposed to be a tissue box with a little guy popping up and down)
Updates from SLee Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
SLee
-
SLee
Final Project – Flamenco Dancer Sloth
My final was a sloth toy that dances Flamenco. The legs do the dance steps. As of now, the arms are stationary, but if I revisit this project in the future, I would like to make the arms move as well.
Video of it dancing -> https://vimeo.com/66965838
Below are the process photos. I used white presentation paper and colored it with markers afterwards.
-
SLee
-
SLee
Emotional Paper Automata Toy – Response
The one thing that surprised me the most about this project was to realize how much I had learned from making those paper automata in the past several weeks. Designing mechanisms has always been my weak point, something that I felt uncomfortable about. In this project, though I had to figure out a mechanism for my own tissue box toy. I dreaded it at first, but after looking through what I had made with paper and looking through the variety of gear, cam and crank mechanism in the books, I was able to come up with my own mechanism. So I was pleasantly surprised by my newly acquired ability. Although the things I can do at this point are still very very basic, I am happy that I was able to somewhat overcome my fear for mechanisms.
The most important aspect of my project is probably the time the toy takes to react to its surrounding. I don’t have the sensors attached to it yet, but my plan is to have the shy “tissue fairy” hide as soon as it senses that somebody is trying to take a tissue out of the box. I want this reaction to be as convincing as possible. I was really inspired by a project called “Pygmies” by Pors and Rao, where they have small cute characters “Pygmies” slowly emerge when there aren’t anything around and then quickly hide behind an object when there is a presence of another human being. The reaction time of these pygmies are very quick and the movement is comical and convincing. I want to set up the sensor that the tissue fairy gives a similar feel to the users.
-
SLee
-
SLee
Embedded Arduino Paper Automata Response
What I found surprisingly difficult about this assignment was, surprisingly, making the paper automata itself. I chose to make the pyramid lifter because I couldn’t quite understand what it was supposed to do from reading the descriptions. As I made progress, I started understanding the mechanism, and that it was actually a rather simple one. The problem was, the book’s instruction. The diagrams were confusing and the glossy paper was not suited for folding so much. So, I would say, the most difficult part about this assignment was following instructions in the book…
On a side note, hiding the arduino and the battery pack was a bit challenging. I originally wanted to have a pedestal underneath the automata to hide the p-comp guts. But the crank is attached to the side of the automata unit. So I somehow had to figure out a way to translate the work of the servo to the crank, but I could not figure that out. Now when I think about it, I think I should have used gears like the ones in the duck and pond automata in the book. I think that would have worked.
On the contrary, what was surprisingly easy was the coding and the wiring parts. It was my first time using the micro, and at first I wasn’t sure how I was going to tackled the 5v and ground issues, because there aren’t enough pins on the Micro. But I ended up using the wire wrapping tool to wrap both the servo and the range finder’s 5v and ground wires to the pins. So that worked out relatively easily.
-
SLee
Cat Paper Automata + Continuous Servo
These are the photos of my cat toy attached to a continuous servo.
Below is my code for the continuous servo.
Last but not least, the video is here!
Making Toys 
Reply