she11sea
11-22-2020, 11:42 PM
As per my previous post to all advanced tail makers and engineers (https://mernetwork.com/index/showthread.php?18405-To-professional-and-advanced-tail-makers-%93next-gen%94-tail-techniques&p=311665&viewfull=1#post311665), here’s my first “next-gen” mermaid tail enhancement idea: Animatronic fins with myoelectric control.
TLDR: Build an animatronic mechanism within the tail that allows you to move your fins with squeezing your muscles or wiggling your toes.
Read on for more details:
There’s a lot of exciting work (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921889017306772) going on in the prosthesis space over the last decade. For those who don’t know, myoelectric control is when a is controlled by the electrical signals in your own muscles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_myoelectric_control).
Animatronic creatures have been used in movies for decades. The tough part would be to have a mechanism that is light and simple enough to be myo-electrically controlled, and safe (of course). Two ideas:
“Ferrofluid” has been used for art (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHZDgSFzQ_s) and engineering applications (most commonly in car suspensions (https://www.topspeed.com/cars/how-do-magnetic-shocks-work-ar169914.html)) for a while now.
Another, more affordable idea would be using nitinol, flexinol or other muscle wires (https://smartwires.eu/index.php?id_category=7&controller=category&id_lang=1). Here’s a video of a butterfly built with them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r8p-Y4_A0c), You’d probably have to use the largest and strongest wires (they can pull up to 2kg) so that they can move in the water.
In either case, you mold fins to have hollow “spines”, and then fill them with either the ferrofluid or the muscle wire.
You’d only need a small, microcontroller (like the tiny Arduino (https://newatlas.com/arduino-nano-family/59759/) which are already used in bionics (https://www.roboticgizmos.com/arduino-bionic-hand/)) that would fit between the thighs inside the tail. Finally also need a power source and some EMG Sensors on the muscles you want to control the fin.
Some possible fin controls and configurations:
Squeeze your butt cheeks, to erect the dorsal fin, relax to depress
Squeeze your thigh muscles, to flare out the respective pelvic fins
Squeeze your calves, to flare out lower dorsal / side fins
The most impressive and complex fin would be the caudal You can wear toe socks wrapped with EMG sensors that could control a vast array of various movements:
Flare your toes to flare out your fin
Wiggle a big toe to control the respective outer spine of the fin (for some flicking, or “come hither” movements with your tail!)
Squeeze your toes to compress and streamline the fin
Obviously there are safety concerns here, everything would have to be 100% waterproof for this to work and have a strong enough, lightweight power source.
But just imagine the control you’d have in the water. You would truly be able to swim like a fish.
It would take your mermaid tail’s realism to the next level. If anyone would see you sunning and relaxing on a rock and startle you, your fins would flare out involuntarily as your muscles would tense up - before you jump back into the water. There would be no doubt in their minds that they truly saw a real mermaid.
Let me know what you guys think of this idea!
She11sea
TLDR: Build an animatronic mechanism within the tail that allows you to move your fins with squeezing your muscles or wiggling your toes.
Read on for more details:
There’s a lot of exciting work (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921889017306772) going on in the prosthesis space over the last decade. For those who don’t know, myoelectric control is when a is controlled by the electrical signals in your own muscles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_myoelectric_control).
Animatronic creatures have been used in movies for decades. The tough part would be to have a mechanism that is light and simple enough to be myo-electrically controlled, and safe (of course). Two ideas:
“Ferrofluid” has been used for art (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHZDgSFzQ_s) and engineering applications (most commonly in car suspensions (https://www.topspeed.com/cars/how-do-magnetic-shocks-work-ar169914.html)) for a while now.
Another, more affordable idea would be using nitinol, flexinol or other muscle wires (https://smartwires.eu/index.php?id_category=7&controller=category&id_lang=1). Here’s a video of a butterfly built with them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r8p-Y4_A0c), You’d probably have to use the largest and strongest wires (they can pull up to 2kg) so that they can move in the water.
In either case, you mold fins to have hollow “spines”, and then fill them with either the ferrofluid or the muscle wire.
You’d only need a small, microcontroller (like the tiny Arduino (https://newatlas.com/arduino-nano-family/59759/) which are already used in bionics (https://www.roboticgizmos.com/arduino-bionic-hand/)) that would fit between the thighs inside the tail. Finally also need a power source and some EMG Sensors on the muscles you want to control the fin.
Some possible fin controls and configurations:
Squeeze your butt cheeks, to erect the dorsal fin, relax to depress
Squeeze your thigh muscles, to flare out the respective pelvic fins
Squeeze your calves, to flare out lower dorsal / side fins
The most impressive and complex fin would be the caudal You can wear toe socks wrapped with EMG sensors that could control a vast array of various movements:
Flare your toes to flare out your fin
Wiggle a big toe to control the respective outer spine of the fin (for some flicking, or “come hither” movements with your tail!)
Squeeze your toes to compress and streamline the fin
Obviously there are safety concerns here, everything would have to be 100% waterproof for this to work and have a strong enough, lightweight power source.
But just imagine the control you’d have in the water. You would truly be able to swim like a fish.
It would take your mermaid tail’s realism to the next level. If anyone would see you sunning and relaxing on a rock and startle you, your fins would flare out involuntarily as your muscles would tense up - before you jump back into the water. There would be no doubt in their minds that they truly saw a real mermaid.
Let me know what you guys think of this idea!
She11sea