For my final project, I made a responsive worm that normally wiggles around on the ground, but when a person comes too close then will look up at the person.
The main challenges for this project was trying to keep the form factor I wanted it – I really wanted the worm to be lasercut wood but getting the wood to bend at the appropriate angle took a fair amount of testing. I found a solution by using two servos that pull the the wood back and keep it in place. Finally, the aesthetics took a good deal of time to try to cover up the circuitry and motors to make it just look like a worm in a tank.
The circuitry and code in itself was quite simple – an analog IR sensor and two servos that pull at string that actuates the worm. However, I think this was a good strategy because of how many iterations the worm movement took to look somewhat good.
A video of the system working (pre aesthetics):
A fritz of the system:
Code: Worm
Videos of Complete Project: