Conclusions and Future Work (HW)
Our prototype was successful in achieving our goal of synchronous, bilateral motion with a single motor. For future work, we would improve on the design to address the challenges we discussed during the construction of our final prototype. Improvement areas include:
Creating a motor mount to ensure the motor is fixed in a constant position
Designing the screw holes on the acrylic gears to be tapered so the screw head could lay flush against the gear surface
Add an additional linkage to increase the range of motion of the wings
Improve the attachment style of the shaft to the gear (instead of using super glue)
These modifications would significantly improve the smoothness of the mechanism’s operation, resulting in a closer resemblance to that of a bird’s wing.