Gasp and Wheeze Puppetry

Abstract

Professor Heidi Kumao from the University of Michigan STAMPS School of Arts and Design has tasked the team to create a kinetic lung mechanism that will be embedded in her puppet sculpture. Based on Kumao’s personal story of the loss of her loved ones, she would like the puppet to come across as “struggling” and provoke empathy from the audience at the exhibits. The user requirements and engineering specifications were developed based on interviews the team had with Professor Kumao. The lung mechanism will be in the approximate shape of human lungs. To express emotions of “struggle,” it would mimic the kinetic motions of sporadic coughing and wheezing. Additionally, the puppet will also have the ability to replicate the sounds of human breathing and coughing, along with the kinetic motions. To elicit empathy from the audience, the kinetic lung mechanism will be overlaid with random coughing and gasping patterns that will appear naturally as life-like. It also has the ability to interact with its audience based on proximity every day over the course of the month-long exhibits. With the concept generation, development, and evaluation process, the team first started with brainstorming concept ideas within the three critical subsystems and two supplementary subsystems as the concept generation method, which exhibited divergent thinking. Then, we used heuristic cards and morphological charts to further develop new ideas and combinations of ideas. Going through the possible combinations of concepts, the team came up with top 8 concepts to be evaluated against criterias that are derived from user requirements, which exhibited convergent thinking. Narrowing down to top 3 concepts, the team then used Pugh Chart to select the final concept. At the end, we also provided an engineering justification for the final chosen design. The engineering analysis and solution development process is done by diving deeper into the components of each of the subsystems and identifying the failure modes of the puppet. Then, three of the main challenges from the failure are identified to conduct engineering analysis. By understanding the quantitative data and behavior of the mechanism, we were able to develop a CAD design with all the components implemented. Since the design involves non-uniform surfaced components, one of the anticipated challenges would be to perform engineering analysis through finite element analysis and appropriate simulation tools. While having a simulation motion demonstration is the minimum deliverable of this project, fabrication of subsystems of the prototype is performed for verifications. This report will outline the details of identification, development, analysis process, and our solution result as well as future recommendations of the project.