Mini Sculpture

Objectives

During the second week of the COSMOS Cluster 2 on Engineering Design and Control of Kinetic Sculptures, our team members learned how to program using RobotC to process sensor data and to control a motor in a Motion Robot. The concepts of automatic sensor data processing and controlling the motion of a component in a Kinetic Sculpture led to the design requirements of a Mini Sculpture. The Mini Sculpture design is a team effort that is completed during the third week of the COSMOS Cluster 2. 

Design Choice

In total, we came up with 5 designs:

• Person Hurter - catapults the marble into a basket

  • This design was not very thought out, and was just an initial first idea. While it was part of our design process, it was not actually considered as a possibility due to the high risk of injury and inaccuracies. It also did not have a user interface, and therefore was even less of a viable project.

  • Risk analysis: inconsistent, potentially harmful

• Indecisive - sorts the marble by color into two baskets by using a moving arm

  • This design had more of a possibility, as it had both a motor movement based on sensor data and possibilities for user interface. However, we were worried about how we would build this, as it seemed like it was unrealistic to create Indecisive with the parts we had.

  • Risk analysis: Marble may not drop at the right spot in the path, or may bounce off while switching lanes

• Celsius - marble sorter (criteria undecided) with an arm that tips down on either side

  • Celsius was a similar design to Indecisive, but it had easier angles to match, and the movement of the motor would be easier to implement than that of Indecisive. Overall, Celsius seemed like a safer option than Indecisive, but its user interface was more boring than Indecisive's, which was the reason we decided against it.

  • Risk Analysis: Need to be careful of speed in case the marble bounces out

• Club Bodyguard - marble rolls down a ramp and bounces off a trampoline into certain baskets

  • Club bodyguard was a design we threw out before building the full sculpture. After testing out the trampoline and its ability to bounce to different levels with marble, we decided this idea wouldn't work. We decided Club Bodyguard would not be the best option as we wouldn't have a trampoline that had enough size and consistency for the sculpture to work.

  • Risk Analysis: Trampoline is inconsistent and calibration may go wrong

• Launcher - uses a ramp to launch marbles into certain baskets

  • Launcher was the last design we created before moving on to the testing phase of the sculptures. The reason we decided against this was because both the building's difficult and consistency were low, and we had better designs to go with. 

  • Risk Analysis: Possibility of not going up the ramp and instead go down