Final Project: The Idea

The theme for out final project is "Puppet Show," which, at first, seemed a little difficult. What would we do with puppets? Should we be traditional and use a marionette or hand puppets? I had no ideas at first. Our first assignment, therefore, was to brainstorm. Everyone presented three or four ideas in class so that everyone could find something they would be interested in doing. I watched some puppet videos on Youtube, thought about the mechanics of different options, and eventually came up with 4 ideas I was pretty excited about.

The first was inspired by N*Sync, the 90's pop boy band. All of their music video dances were very coordinated, and I thought it would be pretty funny to have a coordinated N*Sync dance performed by puppets. My second idea was inspired by DDR, the dancing video game. I imagined a mat much like the DDR mat: pressure sensors in a square and a space to stand in the center. Each button would control a part of the puppet, which would be mounted on a little stage. From this dancing idea came another: the "man-handler." Our professor told us about "bend sensors" which measured resistance as they are bent. The sensors can be big or small, and can be implemented into a variety of things. My idea was to make a glove with bend sensors in the fingers. Each finger would control a limb of a marionette mounted from a wall or a box. My final idea was inspired by one of my favorite online games: QWOP (http://www.foddy.net/Athletics.html). I wasn't sure exactly how the mechanics of the action would work, but the idea was exciting to me.

After everyone had presented their ideas, we had a little time to think about who we would like to work with on  the project, and what idea we would like to work on. I talked with a classmate about a few different ideas and how to make them work mechanically.

Our next assignment was to make LEGO prototypes of our different ideas. They didn't have to be perfect, but they had to show roughly how we expected our puppets to work. Juliette and I decided to collaborate and try out our ideas together, since we had enjoyed working together in class on daily projects. We talked and talked about ways to make our different ideas work, and eventually we make a model for an idea.

As you can see, it's a very rough model. But the concept is the important part. This model works by the motors rotating and the string lifting up the limb it is attached to. We thought a lot about how the motors will be controlled. Our first idea was by bend sensors in a glove. As each finger is bent, a different motor rotates, moving a different limb. We researched on a few websites about either buying or hand-making bend sensors, but then we found this great website with ideas for pressure sensors. We decided to combine two ideas: the "man-handler" and the DDR puppet dancer. The motors would be controlled by pressure sensors in a pad that is connected via bluetooth to the motors attached to the marionette strings.