For my project I built a shelter that would collapse and help people survive after earthquakes. My first idea was to have the shelter inflatable but then I decided to move on to a design based on the Hoberman' sphere. This idea was better because it allowed the structures to be bigger and I decided to make it based off of the Hoberman's sphere after additional research. My first iterations were mainly focused on creating the box that would hold all of the pieces together at the top of the dome. All of this was done in cardboard and after several hours of changes I created a box that would fit all the pieces and allow them to move freely. For the cardboard model I used fasteners (the large ones because unfortunately we had run out of the smaller ones) but I decided to move on to screws instead because thet were more reliable and looked better. The next few days were spent cutting out pieces in wood and assembling. At the end we found there to only be one problem, It would collapse if we brought it out to far. My first idea was to create a base which would connect all the pieces and hold them in place. This would work but would take hours to assemble so I found another solution. while looking at the sphere that we had ordered earlier I realized that by adding little nubs that would prevent the pieces from folding too far.

The problem with disaster relief is that survivors are often trapped, and the rescuers are unable to find them or get to them. My robot would partially alleviate this problem, because it would be able to go into destroyed buildings, fitting into the tiny spaces where humans can't, and find the survivors. It's inching motion would let it move through  a disaster area, and it could be equipped with cameras and speakers to allow communication with the survivors.

My main goal was to build a smallish robot to fit between rubble. The inchworm form works for that very well, because it could go up or down piles of rubble, and stick itself into the buildings without needing much traction. My robot works by attaching lots of modules with servos together, which move together to move the entire robot around. Over development, I added legs for traction, although in the end they didn't help much. The robot does move around now, but the problem going forwards would be to add traction to the front to allow it to grip surfaces.

The first iteration was just one module, a cardboard cylinder with a block coming out. I connected these, and stuck servos in them, and it moved pretty well. I added legs to add traction, but they didnt do much in my final project. The modules didn't change much between this first iteration and the final, with the only major changes being increasing the size to fit the servos and changing the cylinder to a more open form, to decrease weight.

Coyotes eat hundreds of pets per year and attack even more.  They are found in 48 states and can be a huge problem.  I have designed a prototype to protect your animals and backyard from coyotes.  Coyotes are very afraid of anything larger then three or four feet so my robot is tall enough to scare them away as well as being equipped with an alarm system and infared cameras to detect the predators coming.

In my second iteration I made more compartments on the inside for the many wires to run through more smoothly as well as creating more precise measurements for the eyes and sensors.  It poved to be very challenging trying to get all the pieces to fit together perfectly.  It was a very long process of trial and error of trying to get the peices to fit but a way this problem was solved was by using rhino to get precise measurements using the dimensions an measurement tools.  This was time consuming because it took a while to cut out the cardboard and one mistake would mess up the whole model so many different rough drafts were made.

Today we scaled the model to twie as big due to the wheels being too small for the motor.  Scaling it to the new size was difficult and took some time to get right.  Now I can print it all out and fit it together to make the final draft before wood.  I will also need to use compartments correctly so that the wires are secure.