Weekly Challenge 2020 - Week Two 25 March - 31 March - Make something that moves

Chit-Chat / Rumor Mill
#1

This week long challenge is 1/2 artistic, 1/2 robotic.

I’m looking for an artistic kinetic sculpture that moves.

Minimum size is 18" tall.

Entries need to be at least a 5 second video of it moving, with something for scale (banana?) in the shot.

You are not limited to materials, other than it needs to be safe. (No sharp edges people)

You are showing off your design skills, construction skills, ability to make things move and artistic skills. I’m a big fan of STEM < STEAM, a pretty robot is a great robot. You are all familiar with making things that move without falling apart so this is an easy challenge.

Dumping glitter on a robot and have it spin isn’t what I’m looking for. Show your artistic side, and your construction side. I know that most of you are at home and construction materials are limited, go with what you got.

This contest runs until 11:59 PM EDT on 31 March.

(I’ll post the next challenge on Sunday, so I’m back on the week schedule. )

7 Likes
#2

Is this for just VEX parts or can we use other robotics pieces?

#3

It’s wide open use anything you have at your fingertips. But I don’t want to hear "Mr. Foster @RoboCatz took apart my favorite thing to make parts to enter your stupid contest. " from your closest adult. :slight_smile:

Edited to add “or from a sibling” to the list of people I don’t want to hear from :smile:

#4

This looks like a really fun challenge! Is there any specific format that you want the videos to be in when we post them here?

#5

Just as long as they can be viewed here. Try not to use copyright music in the background so there isn’t a takedown notice. Good question, thanks!

#6

I’m still kinda new here, and posting a video on the forums is something that I don’t know how to do yet. How do you post a video?

#7

You use the upload button on the reply tool bar, It’s the flat tray with the Up Arrow. Your phone format will work. Any of the MPG format (MP4 for example will work) can be used. Do a test post as a private mail to yourself and see if you can see it.

2 Likes
#8

actually, you can’t directly attach video files to the forum. you have to upload your file to either google drive, youtube, or some other platform, and then post the link here.

9 Likes
#9

I can’t directly attach the file, so here’s the link to my robot fish:
https://youtu.be/GMfirfLi64c
It doesn’t run as smoothly as I wanted it to because I ran out of certain gears and I also didn’t want to waste a lot of materials to stabilize the fish. The banana is for scale and the sculpture is about 19" tall. Hope you enjoy anyways :blush: :tropical_fish:

18 Likes
#10

Last day to submit your entry.

#11

@CreeperHugger was our winner!! Nice sculpture, very cool movement, excellent use of bi-lateral motion to make the wiggle work. Very nice job. Contact me on how to claim your $80 prize of VEX parts.

3 Likes
#12

Per request, here’s a post entailing my sculpture:
I used Lego Technic parts for the mechanical aspect, with Lego segments offset from each main gear to produce a ‘trailing’ horizontal movement. The segments were also attached to sliders to reduce the amount of vertical movement produced from the rotating gears. For the fish, I used paper (which is versatile and light) and shaped it into a fish with a lot of curling, cutting, and hot gluing. There were 3 main segments of the fish: front, center, back. The front and back were connected to the mechanism to facilitate “swimming” while the center segment “hovered”, connected to the other segments with string and folded paper. This helped make the movements a little more fluid.

8 Likes