Group 068-06: Jack the Greeter

The accomplishments made during week 4 were mostly intangible, but significant nonetheless. Tenzin and George continued to gather information about how to animate Jack's head, Tao and Joshua discussed how their CAD models would be able to coalesce, and work on the biographies was commenced. Date of Update: April 30, 2018

This week marke d the beginning of the transition from the planning phase of the project to the prototyping phase of the pro ject. Instead of allowing Jack's arms to hold the box containing his head, a pedestal will be constructed to serve as a resting place for the box. The advantages of this design change are twofold: 1) The pedestal will serve as a housing for some of the electronics required to animate the head. 2) It will eliminate the possibility of Jack's body breaking due to the weight of the box. It was decided that using Arduino would be simpler to program for the group's needs than Raspberry Pi. CAD models of both the head-raising apparatus (specialized butterfly jack) and the head were completed. The wood and PVC pipe needed to construct Jack's body were obtained and used to make a prototype. Prototype of Jack's Body CAD Model of Specialized Scissor Jack CAD Model of Jack's Head Date of Update: April 22, 2018

Most of Week 2 was used to solidify and build upon the ideas generated during Week 1. Initially, the plan was to construct a zombie that would hold a Jack-in-the-Box (JITB); "Jack" would emerge from the box and greet the visitors with a prerecorded message. However, a refined version of this idea was created during Week 2. Instead of a zombie holding a Jack-in-the-Box, a headless Jack Skellington would hold a JITB containing his head. This head would slowly raise itself out of the box and greet visitors. Additionally, it was decided that the eyes should light up, so that the head would resemble a Jack-O'-Lantern. The inspiration for this idea came from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas , in which Jack Skellington is the pumpkin king of Halloween Town. By creating an animatronic creature that resembles the pumpkin king, children will see a familiar and welcoming character prior to entering the maze, which will make the maze seem less imposing. Jack...

During week one, goals were established and the general idea of what the project will be for the haunted house event was determined. The group consensus was to create a haunted house greeter that would be positioned at the beginning of the maze to welcome the visitors. Based on the success of the haunted greeter, it could do good job setting the appropriate mood for the haunted maze. The event would be a combination of large scale mechanics and electronics.  At present, the visual representation of the event will be a zombie holding a Jack-in-the-Box. When triggered, the head will come out of the box and relay the welcome greeting to the audience, along with other visual effects. During this week, the flowchart was also created. It displays the intended chain of events, as shown below:  Chart displaying sequence of events to be performed by greeter   Date of Update: April 6, 2018