Project Overview

The name "mechanical creepers" was used to describe this project because it comprises a skeletal figure which will be designed to jerk out of a box towards people that walk through the maze. The creeping nature of this project is similar to that of a jack in the box system and the following represents a brief overview of our project goal and tangible deliverable.

All components of this device will be embedded in a box which will be painted to blend with the color of the environment where it will be placed. The top of the box will be made in such a way that it will be able to open when the skeletal body emerges from the box. The box will have a lighting system which will be the LED strip and a sound system attached to its outer surface to create a spooky feeling.

As the children draw nearer to the box, a motion sensor which will be placed outside the box will be used to sense their movements. This will then send signals to the micro controller and trigger the other mechanical parts of the system to carryout their respective functions. The mechanical parts of the project will comprise of the air tanks, solenoids, the linear actuators and the skeletal frame which will be protruding from the top of the box, speakers which will emit creepy sounds previously downloaded into a SD card, the LED strip will be placed on the outer surface of the of the box.

In more details, once the micro-controller receives the signal from the sensor, the skeletal body which we termed the "mechanical creeper" jerks out of the box in a similar fashion to the jack in the box and performs its crowning duty: to scare its victims. A couple seconds after this, the skeletal body will retract into the box and take its initial camouflage form. In order for this entire process to be repeated, the code will be put in a loop.

This blog represents a detailed description of the design process the team plans to undertake to create this project and it entails all background information regarding the progress of the project on a weekly basis, all research information and tutorials the team uses, as well as multimedia regarding the project

Estimated Project Timeline: Ten weeks

NOTE: The video below forecasts the video of the working procedure of our final tangible project