For my second engineering project of the year, my team and I were tasked with creating a toy pet for the Wazowski Toy Company, whose rich history of high quality, reliable products we strove to emulate. This toy needed to function as a finite state machine, being able to move between various states of the program using different sensor inputs. In discussing possible animals to create, my team decided to create an owl, as it is both cute and has an educational connotation. Our final owl design, Casper, incorporated a touch sensor, sound sensor, light sensor, and ultrasonic sensor along with three motors.

   On demonstration day, Casper performed as expected. All the states performed in the manner we expected, and the transitions between states worked as well. Our only minor issue was that Casper transitioned between State 1: Locomotion and State 2: Wing Flap very quickly, so State 1 was only showcased for a very brief time.

   To improve the design of our pet in the future, I believe it would be valuable to create a different transition between either State 3: Hoots in a Circle and State 1: Locomotion or State 1: Locomotion and State 2: Wing Flap, as they both currently use a loud sound to transition, which sometimes leads to State 1 being skipped. I would also change the structure of our robot so that the charging port is more easily accessible, as the current model requires partially disassembling the robot to charge the battery.      

   Please see below for more detailed information about our project. The first module includes pictures of our final pet, the second module includes a video of our demonstration, and the last module includes the state machine diagram for our robot.