Team 6 was intrigued by the idea of continuous motion. Many children enjoy toys that move in rhythm or have mechanical aspects to them. Moving objects capture people’s attention, and if the motion is intriguing enough it mesmerizes them. Most people can remember when they first played with a Newton’s Cradle, so team 6 wanted to recreate this feeling with a new action toy. To get inspiration for different types of continuous motion, the team looked through various motion simulations Andreas Wannerstedt created and posted online. Most of the motion studies Andreas created were physically impossible, so the team focused in on a couple of motion studies that were more realistic and could be used to create an interactive action toy.
Based on a couple of simulations that were most feasible, an idea was developed for a marble track moving continuously. Marble tracks are very common toys for a wide range of ages, yet all commonly sold marble tracks are stationary in some capacity. The difference in our idea was to have the marble tracks moving relative to the ground. The user makes an input decision on when to release the marble to complete the marble track when everything lines up. The game is called Losing Your Marbles, and the goal is to drop a marble at the correct time so that it can make it to the winning hole.
