The Swinging Machine is a robot that swings sideways and swings over itself to move forward. Our first prototype model was made out of cardboard so we could get a sense on what we were making. Our second prototype was made out of wood, and we attached servos to them, so we could test if the robot actually worked. We also changed our hand design. Instead of using electomagnets, we designed a clamp design. We originally decided that we wanted to make our final project out of acrylic but the acrylic kept on braking. We made a few adjustments, and eventually decided to make the Swinging Machine out of wood instead of acrylic.

The first week of building, we sketched out ideas of what we would like our design to be. We came up with an idea that we all really liked: a fantasy car that was based on the idea of a robot that would swing forward on a monkey bar-like infrastructure and electromagnets embedded in the hands of the robot would clamp onto the bars. However, since the robot swings forward, we were worried that when the robot lets go of the monkey bar to reach ahead and grabs another, there would be too much torque for the servos to handle.  We eventually got to a design where the motors produced enough torque for the hands to get around without any issues.