Introduction:
Welcome! We in Engineering Group 072-01 are attempting to develop an innovative new way to eliminate pesky house-dwelling insects. By observing the highly effective insect-catching tongue of the chameleon lizard, our group has set its sights on developing hardware to replicate this phenomenon. Over the course of this project, the goal is to develop a mechanical device which mimics the dynamics, speed, and effectiveness of the chameleon's tongue in order to reinvent the way people eliminate small insects.
Source: Sarfati, Jonathan, “A coat of many colours: Captivating chameleons.” Creation 26(4):28–33 Sep 2004.
Project Abstract:
Source: Sarfati, Jonathan, “A coat of many colours: Captivating chameleons.” Creation 26(4):28–33 Sep 2004.
Project Abstract:
The freshman design project is a way for freshmen
to work in teams to design and build a product with certain objectives in
mind. The design team’s objective for
this specific lab called bio-inspired engineering is to design and assemble a
final deliverable that imitates some aspect of nature in order to solve an
encountered problem. The aim of the
team’s project is to mimic the dynamics of a chameleon’s tongue and its capability
to capture objects with remarkable speed and accuracy. The project deliverable will be built with
the intent to effectively capture insects in nature and to eliminate insects in
domestic households. Part of the
motivation for this product is that it is difficult and messy to clean up the
remains of a dead insect after killing it with a fly swatter. The ultimate
objective of this project is to construct a functioning prototype based on a
computer model of the device in Creo Parametric. The design relies on the principle of stored
potential energy and elastic energy to launch and retract the adhesive tongue,
much like in chameleons.
