Butterfly-Ornithopter Arduino Servos Project

I made these butterfly wings from balsa wood, but they were too thick and heavy for the actual flapping wing ornithopter project I wanted to make. I honestly don't know why I began with such thick wings to begin with. There are many examples online of much lighter and stronger frames for the base of this type of ornithopter. Maybe I thought the thicker wood would be stronger and therefore less likely to be damaged during hard landings. This was my first flapping wing project.

I realized my mistake after awhile and I began experimenting with smaller frames.

I also was trying to use some kind of inexpensive tracing paper which was heavier than what I should have been using. But since I was just experimenting, I didn't want to waste money on expensive model airplane supplies.

Needless to say, this butterfly wasn't going to fly, but the wings flapped somewhat quickly, about three full flaps per second. The servo motors were extremely loud.

Electromagnetic Brushless Motor Project Using Hall Effect Sensor

I made this simple "motor", well really it's just some electromagnets that repel rare-earth magnets attached to the rotor and a Hall Effect sensor provides a timing signal to the system via an Arduino microcontroller. This is a very basic brushless motor concept and it's not efficient or stable yet. I wanted to use this type of motor to move the Phenakistoscope on its axis, but it must be scaled up and the reliability increased with more sensors and possibly more Arduino controllers.

The construction is very simple: large nails are the cores of the electromagnets, with magnet wire wound around and attached to the amplifying circuit boards which are controlled by the Arduino. The Arduino also receives a "trigger" signal from the Hall Effect sensor so that the electromagnets receive their power according to the programmed timing of the system. This obviously needs work since it is prone to losing the correct timing.

I used velcro to attach the electromagnets since this is a test system and I want to be able to adjust the locations of the electromagnets. The rare earth magnets are attached to the ends of small sections of wood that were glued onto the rotor base board, which is just a circular cutout from a 1/4" plywood sheet. A center bolt was placed through washers which serve to prevent friction and wear and the nut is placed on the back of the supporting sheet of plywood.

Phenakistoscope - Animals Evolving

The ability to control the lighting plays an important role in the results of the phenakistoscope.

I wanted to have the ability to remove each triangular section of the phenakistoscope so that I could paint them and reattach them. Each section was primed and velcro tabs glued on, then painted and replaced onto the corresponding velcro tabs that had been glued onto a backing sheet of hardboard that was glued onto the styrofoam cylinder. The theme is animals evolving into a robotic form of animals.

Animabotics - What is it?

Animatronics + Robotics = Animabotics.

"Animabotics" is a term that came to me as I was working on an idea about combining Animatronics with Robotics, since animatronics are generally controlled remotely using manual joysticks or some form of automation that is built into a computerized control system. Robotics is a term that can refer to any form of automated machine-based system, and my aspirations are toward building works of kinetic art that can also be developed into interactive kinetic art, ultimately autonomous and/or controlled by a user or audience. A first version of this type of animabotic work was a simple walking humanoid robot, but this is not my main focus, just a first work.

My first Animabot was a four-legged frame and the legs were powered by miniature servo motors.

The second Animabot was a two-legged design and here is the torso.

The full body of the Animabot contains the approximate number of servo motors, but the torso must twist in order to duplicate a human body, so there needs to be a motor-system installed at the base of the "spine".