Conclusion

Overall, the project required a bit of thought and the design was a bit tedious since one of the main objectives was to make it compact.  However since we wanted a fast linear motion, we needed to generate a good amount of force.  This force can be obtained with a mechanism such as the four-bar used in this project, alongside a gear train and a decently strong servo. We are sure there are clever ways of arranging the system in a more efficient way while also creating a more simpler and efficient mechanism that outputs more force out, thus being able to compress stiffer springs and ultimately generating a really fast gripper release.    

Future Work

Future work would most likely consist of creating the gripper mechanism and design it so that it is able to grasp on to water bottles efficiently. We would then merge it with the quick release mechanism created in this project.  Another improvement to work on would be to make it even more compact and light weight, since the final prototype is the size of someone's head.  Ideally, the size of the gripper should be around the same size as a human fist.  It would also be nice to make a better case for the device while compacting the components inside more efficiently. Besides that, changing the design so that it looks more aesthetic would be great.