Kermit the Frog

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 Duc Nguyen and Julia Ferreira
Intro to Engineering: Robotics
Robotic Animal
 
             For our robotic animal, we decided to make a frog.  We used the brick as the body and attached two motors to either side.  To each motor, we attached a white, angled piece to serve as the leg, and a small wheel with a tire to serve as the foot for traction.  It has two stationary front legs that are part of the upper body of the frog, which is attached to the front of the brick.  On the upper body, we attached a touch sensor to the top, and a sonar sensor to the front.  It walks by moving its two hind legs in a clockwise motion, pushing the body forward and imitating the hop of a frog.  It has a touch sensor that causes the frog to leap forward, just like how real frogs react when touched.  We also used a sonar sensor as the “eyes” of the frog.  When the frog gets within 30cm of an obstacle, it will stop moving to avoid a collision.
            One challenge we ran into was stabilizing the back legs so that they don’t fall off.  They would also get out of sync, causing the frog to rock sideways instead of hopping.  To solve this problem, we decided to stabilize the legs.  We used the little red axel to attach the wheel to the end of the leg as opposed to a long grey axel, and the yellow spacers to secure the white piece (the frog’s leg) on the axel that was attached to the motor.  We also had a problem with the sonar sensor because when the frog jumps, the front points down a little, causing the sensor to pick up the floor.  We solved this problem by propping up the sensor so that it points slightly upward.

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