Meet Mr. Rabbit!

 


Jessica and Mr. Rabbit

 

 

The rabbit design took many twists and turns,but as the Robotics Exhibition drew near, it came together: Mr. Rabbit was definitely a challenge to build. Jessica made several models trying to come up with the perfect rabbit. Initially, she wanted to have him move his head up and down when he fell asleep, but the head ended up being too heavy and the motors were unable to lift it after it dropped. The group decided to sacrifice that idea and have Mr. Rabbit tilt his ears up and down. Although this part seemed easy, this was the most difficult part of the body to create. The ears had to be able to bend forward, but the motor was stationary within the head. The gears had to rotate without their movement being obstructed by the cotton within the head. To give the appearance that Mr. Rabbit was actually running, we thought it would be clever if he could move his arms back and forth. Once the arms were attached and moveable, a cotton-ball tail was made to spin as Mr. Rabbit moved forward as well. Lastly, Jessica thought it would be fun if the audience could hear music during each phase of the race. She thought that it would be a snap to program little tunes into the robots. Although Mari did her best to hum the tunes, the exact codes were elusive. Ah, how wrong she was. Jessica composed two little tunes on the handy board. The first is a lullaby that plays from Mr. Rabbit when he falls alseep. The second tune is "Celebate Good Times" and plays from Mr. Turtle after he realizes he has crossed the finish line first. A third and final tune was actually borrowed from a prior Robotics project and is Taps which Mr. Rabbit plays when he reaches the finish line and realizes that he's lost.

 

 

Side View (skeleton exposed)

A revealing backview:

Here they are side by side, almost ready to race (but first they need to make an appointment with the costume department: get some clothes on!).

Who is that swanky bunny?

 

Home Mr. Turtle Rabbit Code

Created by, Mari Edwards, Catalina Millan Caceres, Jessica Pierog
Created: January 2001
Last Modified: January 2001