Design and fabrication of the educational viral gaming machine

• Main Author: Lum, Jing Hui.
• Other Authors: Cai Yiyu
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Mechanical engineering::Machine design and construction
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/39625
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The aim of this FYP (Final Year Project) is to design and fabricate a prototype educational gaming machine specializing on the education on viruses. At the moment, there is a need to educate the general public on viruses, and how to better protect themselves against viruses, due to the outbreak of the influenza A virus (H1N1) and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). In order to do so, there is a proposal to educate the students in secondary schools by using an entertainment machine. The machine is expected to catch dolls, which were embedded with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips, that when scanned on a RFID scanner, will allow a user to learn more about viruses and how to protect themselves against it. This machine will be target the secondary 2 students and it will be installed at the secondary schools’ canteens. The report will cover on what the author did in order to design and fabricate the machine that fulfills the above-mentioned objectivities, such as doing a literature review on the topic of viruses, on the shapes of the viruses as well as understanding how mankind is able to defend himself from it by both internal and external means. After which, the author did a literature review on the commercial video arcade machines and doll catcher machines in order to design a better machine. The report will then discuss on the process of selection and design that was done by the author to design the game machine. The report will also discuss on the machine gameplay, as well as its element design that was conceptualized by the author. The report will continue on to discuss on the fabrication and assembly of the claw and the machine, as well as the problems faced by the author and their resolution. The report will conclude with a summary of the author’s contributions to the project, in order to accomplish the project objectivities, and how in the process designed and produced a novel claw machine, which is the first of its kind to incorporate multiplayer functions with a different way of gameplay. The report will finally end the conclusion by giving recommendations for possible future improvements that can be added to the machine.