Conclusions and Future Work (HW)

Our prototype was successful in achieving our goal of synchronous, bilateral motion with a single motor. For future work, we would improve on the design to address the challenges we discussed during the construction of our final prototype. Improvement areas include:

  • Creating a motor mount to ensure the motor is fixed in a constant position
  • Designing the screw holes on the acrylic gears to be tapered so the screw head could lay flush against the gear surface
  • Add an additional linkage to increase the range of motion of the wings
  • Improve the attachment style of the shaft to the gear (instead of using super glue)

These modifications would significantly improve the smoothness of the mechanism’s operation, resulting in a closer resemblance to that of a bird’s wing.