For the final project in Mechanical Design I (ME 370) in the Spring 2016 semester, students formed teams and built all-terrain “walkers,” in a nod to the giant mechanical war machines featured in the film Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
“The Rebel Alliance needs you to design new all-terrain walker vehicles to help in our fight against the First Order,” read the assignment’s “debriefing” statement. “To come up with new prototypes that will be optimized for many different planets with different gravity and habitats, we need you to draw biomimetic (and xenobiomimetic) design. Design vehicles that borrow from nature to skitter like a crab, hop like a frog, walk like a bird, crawl like a lizard, trot like a horse, or trellaumph like an Andorian Kryshyk.”
The objective was to design, prototype, and test walkers that could rapidly negotiate rough terrain on the Bardeen Quad—essentially sidewalks and thick grass.
Each team prepared a video of the process it went through to create its walker. Below are the videos from the three teams that were named winners of the competition, along with one honorable mention.
Team 4: Christopher Aksland, Hong Chou, Ryan Clancy, and Matthew Schroeder.
Team 7: Woojae Kim, Zhaoer Li, Jeffrey Nie, and Tongxi Yan.
Team 3: David Gualandri, Bryant Lin, Donald Witt, and Jason Yang.
Team 7.2: Dan Anastasia, Nealay Kalita, Katya Konova, and Mario Lopez.