Objectives

The Threatened Owl was an offshoot of project attempted to provide a more engaging interaction from the audience, but found that exploring how an animal fends off engagement was far more interesting. The goal of the project then became attempting to build a robot that could perform, at least in part, like a threatened bird. Therefore, size and performance were evaluated, and visual tracking and wing actuation were necessary features. The size of the bird would serve to add to its performance in a subtle fashion. Complete modeling of the wing of a bird is outside the scope of this project due to time constraints and given that my background is not in biology or osteology. However, I do have an interest in the intersection of geometry and behavior and how they affect each other and so the world of animals is a familiar and convenient place to begin.