Week 6 Progress

    The main purpose of this week was coding, mainly because our main personnel for the mechanical  body is sick and our cautiousness prevented us from committing to huge adjustments. We did not want to make any irrevocable changes to the materials for the body portion of the project before we consulted with our mechanical design personnel. Other than that, we did some minor work such as making the movable eyebrows.

Objective:

• Program Arduino code for the eyes
• Create the eyebrows
• Placement of LED Lights for the eyes

Figure 1: Arduino Code for Fading LED Lights

Coding Arduino

 During this week, we wanted to program the Arduino code for the fading LED lights, which is the unique feature of the animatronic device's eyes. The basic Arduino "Fade" code was adjust to fade the LED lights in and then remain lit until the entire sequence was reset. The code our lead programmer procured is displayed in Figure 1.

 

 

 

Making the Eyebrows

    Though we bought a mask for the animatronic device, we wanted some of the features to move, specifically the eyebrows. We obviously could not make the eyebrows in the mask move, so we made a separate pair to use. These eyebrows, shown in Figure 2, will be connected to a servo motor, enabling movement. A sketch of this plan is depicted below in Figure 3.

Figure 2: Eyebrows

Figure 3: Design Plan of Eyebrow's Motors

   From the plan in the image above, the motor will be seated on a shelf placed within the head. The motor will be attached the board by either glue or screws to prevent the motor from sliding as the animatronic device functions. Because the motors are used to move the eyebrows, they must be placed right against the back of the face of the head to work correctly.

 Placement of LED Lights

   Figure 4 reveals the head of the animatronic device with the LED lights attached, though the new set of eyebrows are currently not placed on the face. There are holes in the mannequin head for the LED lights to fit in to look as natural as possible. The mask will need to be permanently attached to the head to ensure that the animatronic device's head looks as intended.

Figure 4: Animatronic Device's Head
with Mask and LED Lit Eyes