Week 5 Progress

    The build phase continues! It is now week 5 of the design duration. In this week, we continued to build our animatronic, starting by small preparations such as cutting some components and drilling holes into others. As we do every week, a potential reassessment of our design is discussed to map out any blurry details that made no sense or were impractical. We had an issue with meeting the minimum amount of motors, but the problem was solved on the same day. By the end of this session, we want to list out any materials or actions that still require attention for next week's session.

Objectives:

• Continuing the build phase
• Reassessing the design

Build Phase Status

    In this session, our group cut out the PVC pipes for the arms and drilled holes for the "joints." We got screws of the right size to attach the PVC together while simultaneously allowing rotation. The main problem to fix in regards to the arms is to have a limiter set to prevent the arms from swinging in the opposite direction and from overreaching a certain range. The range has yet to be set, but completing this job will not be difficult.

   For the head portion of our design, we bought a hollow mannequin head to use as shown in Figure 1. We adjusted its size by cutting its neck to fit our overall design. A hole was made in the back of its head to have an opening to place small motors used for moving the eyebrows. The alterations made can be seen in Figure 2 due to the large opening on the back of the head. This opening will also make wiring the LED easier to accomplish.

Figure 1: Front of the Head

Figure 2: Back of the
Head with Hole

    We cut out a flat wooden platform, the one shown in Figure 3, for the head to rest on to enable its rotation. These actions are just the preliminary preparations for further action.

Figure 3: Wooden Platform to Place
Motor in Neck

Reassessment of Current Design

     Despite being halfway through the project duration, new ideas and design reassessments still emerge. A relatively new idea for the arms is to use bolts and nuts to enable the swinging motion.  The arms will move by the force of gravity than by a motor for a simpler design. Design the exact way the arms function is the biggest hurdle our group has to face, but now that we have this new plan, less stress can be placed on this feature and be delegated to other parts.

    Originally, we planned to enable our animatronic to move its mouth, but this idea will be scrapped because of its incompatibility with our materials, specifically our mask. Our mask only has holes for the nose and the eyes, so making a new hole for the mouth would make the mask look tacky. However, the eyebrows of the animatronic are still moving in accordance with our original design. The main problem now is wiring, coding, and fitting a speaker in the head to enable a scream-like audio. The idea to put the speakers in the head might be scrapped if we cannot procure a small speaker for our project.

    New ideas were brought up to incorporate lighting and audio in the body portion of the design. We might install some lights in the background, potentially in the shape of a fake satanic circle, to give our the area around our animatronic a creepy vibe. The audio for it will just provide a background ambience. If we played creepy church music, for example, the suspense is already instilled into the audience before they meet our animatronic.