Sea Turtle Lantern

This sea turtle robot was inspired by the Asian Lantern Festival at the Pittsburgh Zoo. The beautiful lanterns inspired me to make my own small version!

I started by working on the mechanism to move the legs of the robot, which was based on the penguin in Paper Animals in Action! by Rob Ives. It uses two Lego crank and piston mechanisms to move each set of wings up and down.

The wings are restrained by the turtle's shell to make the paddling motion. The shell was an armature of metal (made from bangle bracelets) covered by white jersey material (part of an old pillow case).

I used papier-mâché to cover the white jersey in pieces of tissue paper so that the shell would be translucent. Papier-mâché was also used to create the head. 

Finally, I placed a single color LED in the head and attached other single color and tri-color LEDs to the underside of the shell. I programmed the single color LEDs to gradually dim and brighten while the tri-color LEDs slowly changed color. The two rotation motors were turned on at a low speed to control the turtle legs.