The Mighty Hug Machine

    For our project, we designed a hug machine. We designed the machine so that if someone put an object in front of it, the machine would squeeze or hug it in a matter of a couple of seconds. We were not really inspired by any other projects, but we were inspired by lonely people who did not have hugs. Hugs can help calm people down, and everybody needs a warm embrace after a hard day. We just came up with the idea, along with a couple of other ideas, and after changing our project three times, decided to go with this one.

    We had some problems with the design of the machine. The most prominent challenge we had was figuring out how to get the forearms of the machine to curve inwards in order to squeeze or hug the object or person. We spent a lot of time thinking about this issue until we finally came up with a solution. Our solution was to attach poles to the machine to block the movement of the forearms while the upper arms kept moving away from each other to make the forearms curve inwards into a hugging or squeezing position.

    We used YouTube to research how to animate our hug machine 3D model using Blender. Although it took time and effort, we finally learned to animate using Blender, and to successfully create an animation of what our hug machine would have looked     like.

    Due to the time constraints, we were unable to construct a physical machine. If we had been given more time, we would have done so. We would also have tried to advance the design of the machine so it would also work with smaller objects or people. With our machine the way it is now, any object or person we used would have to be reasonably big.

    We would advise people to focus on the brainstorming, since a good idea is essential to having a good project. While you obviously should not get carried away, do not be afraid to push yourself out of your comfort zone. We would also advise people to get an early start and to do most of the designing at the very beginning.

Our project cost $0 since we did not build it. If we had, it would have probably cost somewhere in the $150-200 range due to the amount of wood necessary to build the body of the machine, large servo motors to move the arms, and padding for the arms to make it more comfortable and less rough.

   

Bibliography

Studios, Thilakanathan, director. Introduction to Basic Animation in Blender. YouTube, YouTube, 25 Aug. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZkdR1L91Ik.