Mimicking the motion of a Coconut Crab using 1-degree of freedom planar mechanisms

Team Members: Cecilia Corral, Haoran Xie, Pradeep Radhakrishnan and Sadhan Sathyaseelan

Introduction

Our goal is to mimic the motion of a coconut crab using one-degree of freedom planar mechanisms. An example of a coconut crab is shown in the video below. 

As you may notice in the video, there are two pairs of legs on either side of the crab body in addition to a pair of claws on the front and a pair of small legs on the rear side. The two pairs on either side are the main source of motion. The front claws and the rear legs serve as support apart from the obvious predatory function of the front claws. For this course, we decided to