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Academics
Robot Dinosaur
For an engineering outreach program at the local elementary school, I mentored some aspiring engineering students through the design process of a robot dinosaur. I modeled the design in SolidWorks, fabricated using a laser cutter, and incorporated a string of LED's made by the junior engineers. The process was informative and rewarding to see the huge smiles when the finished dinosaur started dancing to music.
Purpose:
As part of the engineering outreach program with the local elementary school, I mentored some local elementary school students through the engineering design process and bring their ideas to life. I partnered up with two awesome junior engineers who described the dancing dinosaur robot that they wanted. The specific requests they wanted for the robot included: a moving head and tail, the ability to move forward and spin in place, and to dance to the song "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham!
Design:
To achieve the spinning head and tail, two servos would be placed at the front and back of the dinosaur. The motor powering the wheels would go towards the bottom with the Arduino and battery pack just above it. Sticking out of the sides would be a string of LED's created by the students themselves. Finally, Arduino programming software was used to bring everything to life.
Implementation:
After quickly realizing how hard it is to create a good looking dinosaur from scratch, the best solution was to use a dinosaur stuffed animal and work the components to fit inside. It was especially challenging because the dinosaur turned out to be a lot smaller than expected, causing me to rethink the internal design. However by stacking the Arduino and battery pack on top of each other, there was fortunately just enough space to fit everything within.
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