Introduction
Peeling bananas is hard, but it does not have to be. A robot that can quickly, consistently, and effectively peel a banana is not only very useful, but could also be pretty interesting. People eat bananas every day, it only makes sense to want to speed up the peeling process.
Complexities
There are a few obstacles that need to be addressed, one of them being the motion of the linkage arms that are doing the peeling. They need to both consistently peel from a specific location and pull in a line of motion that will not obstruct any other mechanism or run into the bananas, which are bound to have inconsistent shapes and sizes. On that note, mounting the bananas is also a challenge as they are not all the same size or shape, so keeping the tip (where the peeling starts) of the bananas in a consistent location is necessary. Lastly, we know that we will need multiple separate mechanisms linked together to occur one after another in a specific order and at a specific speed.There already exists a multitude of walking linkage mechanisms, from the Jensen linkage to the Klann linkage, there is no shortage of mechanisms that achieve this profile. Instead of replicating what many other linkage systems have done, we wanted to tackle a problem more complex while still keeping the theme of walking linkage systems. Therefore, we turned to nature and looked at how other organisms moved. We were particularly fascinated with the spider, with movements that seemed to pivot and shift rather than strut like a typical walking linkage system, and so for our project we decided to mimic the movements as best we can. The biggest issue, is the fact that a spider leg moves with multiple degrees of freedom and in different directions, as such a direct copy would involve knowledge beyond the scope of this class. Instead be decided to approach this goal by combining two different 1 DOF linkage systems in different phases to achieve a similar 3D motion, limiting the scope to contents of our class and also creating a challenge that not only involves the design of linkages, but also the fine tuning of the relationship between multiple linkages using just one input. In summary, our goal is to create the closest representation of a spider as we can, capturing the complex motion profile of the legs using two 2-D linkage systems in parallel to create a more realistic walking motion.
Complexities
Many complexities arise from replicating the walking profile of a spider. Because a spider's leg has multiple degrees of freedom, they are able to move in very complex position profile. Furthermore there are very few resources that are applicable to this situation, and therefore our solution will have to be relatively novel. In order to replicate a spider as closely as possible, there will also be 8 individual legs. Each leg would add another layer of friction and possibility of error, potentially creating issues for actuation, troubleshooting, among many others.
Description of Proposed Mechanism
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