Background Research

The main topic of this project is using automation to see the effects of physics being used in toys and different automations and see what types of motions they produce and using the Design Process and Engineering principles to design and model our Automata box. Our goal is to make an automation toy for children for all ages and the automations tells a story of what is happening.

Some principles and concepts that are going to be used in this project is going to be:

There are many types of motion: Linear, rotary, reciprocating, and oscillating motion
Cams are used to turn rotary motion into linear motion which will be the heart of this whole automata box.
There are 6 different types of cams: circular, eccentric, hexagonal, heart, snail, and pear and each cam makes linear motion, but the amount of linear motion made my each of the cams are different.
Design process: There are 6 steps to the design process: Define Process, Generate Concepts, Develop solutions, Construct and Test, Evaluate Solutions, Present Solution.
Joints are used to connect two components and allow them to have degrees of freedom. There are 7 types: Rigid, revolute, slider, cylindrical, pin-slot, planar, and ball.
Displacement is the measurement between the starting position and ending position of an object regardless of the path followed.