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The pictures below show the 2 positions of the tail we sought to make our robot's tail mimic. As you can see in the picture on the left, the hyenas tail bends down below the hind legs. The picture on the right shows the hyena with its tail curled over the back.
  Our hyena tail has evolved as the semester has progressed. We aimed to make our robot as realistic as possible. Below is our first attempt at making the tail. The movement of the tail in this prototype was consistent with the range of motion we wanted for our robot. While encouraging, we found that the flexibility of our tail design was lacking, and decided to take on a more complex and accurate design. This first design became our "fall back" if our ambitious approach were to fail. After observing hyena tail movements in videos and pictures we decided we needed to have a more curling motion which could be achieved by compounding smaller segments together to make one tail. We found several tail designs through research which used vertebrae type links which allow a tail to bend when tension was placed on wires which ran through the outside of the links. Using this principle, we decided to make 3D models of disks, and print them in 3D to make the below structure. The wires running along the outside of the disks can then be connected to a motor which will make the structure bend. The red wire through the center is a place holder and was replaced a more stable wire to provide support for the tail.  The video below shows our tail working as we designed! The tail curls up and down to show the hyenas different behaviors. The Servo motor pulls the top wire to curl the tail up and the bottom wire down to curl it down. This will be mounted inside of the hyenas backside and covered with fabric to make it look like a real tail. Our team has implemented the above design into the model hyena body. The video below shows the tail being controlled with the user interface to show the movement of the hyena tail. The tail has been covered with material to make the tail appear as an actual hyena, because ascetics are very important for our project. |
Hyena Tail |