Last edited 4dec12 by gsmith3@illinois.edu
Find this document at http://new.math.uiuc.edu/math198/gilliansmith
Bicycle Man: A Blobby Man Adventure
Proposal
Bicycle Man will be an investigation into the
bio-mechanics of riding a bike. The inspiration
for this project came from Sarah Hoovey's Workout
Guy and Matthew Piper's RunningGuy. The goal for
Bicycle Man will be to take the blobby man from
these previous projects and make him ride a bike.
The bicycle will move by a predetermined velocity. The movement and speed of the blobby man
will be using bio-mechanics.
The main goal of this project is to get blobby
man riding a bike in a straight line. If
time permits I would like to add more features.
The first modification I would make would be to
have the blobby man ride on an oval track instead
of in a straight line. Another modification after the circular track is achieved would be to add more blobby men onto the track. They may only be different colors or sizes. They may also move at different speeds. All of these are additions are time-dependent and may not happen.
Narrative
Week of 15oct12
-Investigated bicycle frame shapes and decided on the classic diamond frame because it gives the greatest stability and rigidity without added weight
Week of 29oct12
- On the advice of Professor Francis my plan for this project will be to add in colors on the legs to highlight muscle activity while the Blobby man is biking. This may mean that not all original planned features will be present but the color will be more useful education wise.
Week of 26Nov12
- The bike and Blobby man have been built in VPython. There is a box included beneath the bike to simulate the ground and will eventually become a track for the bike to move on. The next step is to rotate the legs and pedals
- bicycle and Blobby Man
Week of 3Dec12
- In an attempt to rotate the Blobby man's legs and the bike wheels code was borrowed from Matt Piper's Running Guy and then modified to work with my program. Unfortuanetly the rotational axis was not correct and the following mistake occured
- Other rotational errors have occured in the process which are shown here for your personal enjoyment
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Week of 10Dec12
- As I mentioned before I altered my plan for this project to include a part of the program that shows when the muscles are activated based on color. That section of this project was finished this week. The legs only rotate once but do so slowly. It can also be restarted once without having to close and open the program.
Documentation
- biomechanics of cycling seminar
- full propsosal
- construction of the bike
- creation of the muscles
-BicycleMan