2.) Project Proposal

Introduction:

The end goal of this project was to create an art-motion profile of a canine that showcased both walking and running motions.

Initially, our goal was to achieve these motion profiles with four different mechanisms (one per leg). All mechanisms would have to be in sync to mimic the walking and running motions, because if one of the four legs is not, the motion profiles would be out of phase. To do this, our proposal was to use only one actuator and offset each leg to match the patterns we observed when studying canine walking. Additionally, we planned to include a bobbing head and wagging tail to present a full visual. However, a lot of these proposals were cut due to time constraints and schedule conflicts between the team members.

Preliminary design:

In the beginning, we developed several designs based on the profile of one leg. After examining some different examples, we chose a video to base our project on, traced the dog's motion, and ran a motion analysis. 

After running the motion analysis and speaking to our TAs, we knew that an eight-link mechanism inspired by the Theo Jansen mechanism was the solution to our project.

We ran analysis on several different iterations of our eight-link mechanism design, some of which can be seen below.

We chose a final design, seen below, and were able to begin prototyping.

Our final design, however, had to be reduced to only a side profile of a canine, showcasing only two legs and with each limb having an independent actuator. Also the head and tail part of the design had to be scrapped. As seen in the figure below, the aesthetic linkages were redesigned to better simulate a dog's leg, but the working linkages' lengths were unchanged from the figure above.