Creation and choreography of robotic bird
Alexander Larsson · DiVA (Mälardalen University College) · 2009
In this thesis a dancing swan robot is made utilizing already existing components. Webuilt the neck from stacking servo-actuators on top of each-other. The legs are a beamconstruction with 1 degree of freedom. The wings have 4 degrees of freedom, of which 3 inthe shoulder joint. From the shoulder joint a beam protrudes outwards to an actuator in theelbow joint which in turn has a beam attached representing the outer wing. Communicationsare handled by USB transceivers making a regular personal computer capable of directlyinterfacing with the actuators. In order to choreograph the motion a recording solution wasimplemented utilizing the sensors in the servo-actuators to periodically sample the positionof the joints. A control program is developed to handle both playback of recorded motionand a prerecorded audio track. While recording the control program periodically polls theengines about their current position and stores the time and position in a table. Whenplaying the animation the control program periodically polls the table to see if any samplesare due, in which case it instructs the actuator to move towards the sample point.