Jaws. The name evokes a sense of fear and suspense in every person who has ever seen the movie. But it does more than that. From just the name, you can create an entire story around a giant killer shark. This was our goal for the automaton-- to tell a story about a shark. The story is simple, a lone man in the ocean sees a shark fin move past his boat, so he starts rowing. After a few more passes, there is a pause, and Jaws pops out of the water and grabs his boat. The overall automaton is fairly simple with only a few major components including a shark fin on a rotating belt, a man who rows a boat by way of offset pushrods, and a pop-up shark controlled by a motor and a spring. Most of the mechanical automation was simplified by introducing Crickets to automate the motions. The Crickets control the timing and duration of the actions for the parts. The automaton makes use of three motors, which are controlled by two Crickets that use infrared to communicate with each other.

This dancing automaton is meant to entertain and draw laughs from all who watch him in action. With his cowboy hat, overgrown belt buckle, Clock necklace, and Glittery silver glove he would stick out on any dance floor. His body, arms, head, and foot move to the beat of the music most of the time. To produce his somewhat jerky movement we used a simple set of belts and pulleys driven by motors. His great sense of rhythm comes from sound sensors and crickets that control the motors. The Crickets activate the motors with varying degrees of power based on the noise level reported from the sound sensor. The sound sensors add randomness to the dancing as they have a fixed sampling rate that sometimes misses beats and sometimes picks up background sounds guaranteeing that each dance will be unique.

The automaton we have created is a perpetual ball machine. It shoots ping pong balls, retrieves them, and returns them back to be shot again. This process continues indefinitely. In order to accomplish these tasks, the machine makes use of computational power. The timing and operation of the machine is controlled through the use of software and external sensors. The working ball machine is a complex integration of computational and mechanical parts.