Fall 2013 BIRD

Team Members:

Geoffrey Salazar, Minh Duong, Jacob Chapa

Idea:

The goal of BIRD is to replicate the motion of a flying bird. There are many different aspects to analyze including "in flight" motion as well as "take off" and landing flight motions. Ultimately, BIRD will design a flapping wing mechanism which should fly given the right material and equipment.

Original Design Research/Analysis

The design of our mechanism is based on a compilation of analysis of different flapping bird motions. Our ultimate goal is to build a robot that can fly like a bird. The original idea of replicating a bird's flying motion came from a presentation on Ted Talks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_JcKSHUtQ

As seen in the video, the experiment involved a robot flying by replicating the flapping motion of a bird. In terms or replicating a bird's entire motion however, there is more to the mechanism than just flapping it's wings. More research was needed to properly understand a bird's entire motion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jKokxPRtck

After reviewing all the information, we wanted our mechanism to replicate the rotation a bird has in it's wings meaning we needed two degrees of freedom instead of just one as seen in the Ted Talks experiment. Due to the time constraints of the semester, our first prototype will only encompass the flapping motion seen in bird flight. The first prototype of the mechanism will be made of wood. We want to fully grasp each degree of freedom separately and then try to combine them in the end. Ultimately, we can take some insight from the shoulder mechanism Dr. Deshpande introduced at the beginning of the year to see how to combine both motions with one motor.