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Our Team
Our Team
We are TeaM ZebrA, consisting of Tara, Maya, Zack, and Aaron. The first and last letters in either word in Team Zebra correspond to the first letters of our team members' first names. Here is a brief introduction of our members:
Tara: primary builder in our team.
Maya: deals with the bulk of documentation and science communication for our sculpture (presentations, websites) and assists with building.
Zack: helps with anything; mainly focused on building.
Aaron: handles everything programming-related in our team.
More information on the curriculum and teams can be found at Cluster 2's webpage Engineering Design and Control of Kinetic Sculptures.
Kinetic Sculptures
Kinetic Sculptures
Our team members learned how to design, analyze, fabricate and control several kinetic sculptures! The kinetic sculptures include individual Pendulum Clocks, a controlled Mini Sculpture and an automated Full Sculpture created by our team.
Design was facilitated with Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools implemented in Fusion and AutoCAD.
Analysis of the dynamics of movement of the sculptures is based on fundamental physics with the mathematical description of motion covered in lectures and simulations facilitated by Working Model 2D (WM2D).
Fabrication is done both manually in the Dept. of MAE Design Studio and automated with Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) tools provided by the LaserCAMM and optional 3D printing, initiated by a Clock Project.
Additional motion control is added to our kinetic sculptures by using Lego NXT sensors, including our specially designed COSMOS ball speed sensor, NXT motors and programming an NXT using RobotC.
Our team webpage gives a summary of both our individual and team effort to make our kinetic sculptures work as designed!
Accomplishments
Accomplishments
Our most important outcomes:
Our first project in our mini sculpture was a hinge ramp that changes its slope based on the velocity measured by a speed sensor; therefore causing the marble to land in the basket. This was the main part of our mini sculpture, so completing it; and it actually working, was an accomplishment.
Another project that had an important outcome was our autonomous sculpture. Our mini sculpture was not autonomous and had to be reset every run. However, our final sculpture has an elevator takes it back to the very top of the track. So it can continuously run without human interaction.
Our teams lack of previous knowledge on many of the subjects touched in this cluster, these things felt like a big accomplishment.
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