Low Friction Camera Mount
World Wildlife Fund Conservation Technology Internship Summer 2020
One of my main projects at World Wildlife Fund was modifying a mount for an anti-poaching thermal camera system currently used in Kenya. The system consists of a FLIR thermal camera with a protective casing and mount that was designed by WWF Conservation Engineer, Eric Becker. Currently, two of these cameras are used in a protected area in Kenya to look for poachers at night. As the sun sets, at least three teams of rangers will set out on patrol. One team of rangers will have the camera with them and drive to a high-risk area where they will park until morning. After parking, the team will attach the camera to their vehicles and scan for threats. If the rangers see a potential threat, they use their radios to alert and direct the other ranger teams to apprehend the poacher. After the patrol the rangers remove the camera from their vehicle and store it in a weather-proof case. The use of just these two cameras has already resulted in 300 arrests.
To address a sticking issue on the mount, I did research in 2 main areas: how materials attach to each other and low friction materials. I looked at camera sliders, legos, rack and pinion systems, and linear slides. To better understand low-friction materials, I read about the properties of PTFE (used to make the Teflon non-stick coating on pans), Acetal, and other plastics. After doing this research, I created my design criteria, which were standards the design had to meet.
After I made the design criteria, I then brainstormed! I generated 22 ideas on how to connect the camera to the rangers' cars. The ideas ranged from adding cutouts or slots to adding buckles like you see on a backpack. This project was particularly interesting, as the design solution had to address the sticking problem but also be put together easily and quickly in the dark.
I refined the ideas through Pugh Screening matrices (one of which is shown below), and one of the designs with the highest scores was to make as much as possible out of low-friction plastic. This design was selected because it was the only design that did not require any modifications (ie adding slots or drilling additional holes) to be made to the camera plate. To keep the camera plate part of the design the same, the rails that the camera slides into became plastic, while the camera plate remained metal. To further reduce friction, cutouts were added to the rails.
What I contributed to the design were the cutouts in the existing rails and protective cover plates.
The CAD designs were created in Autodesk Fusion 360. Using the Manufacture function, I was able to add tool paths showing how the raw materials should be cut to result in the parts shown below.
Additionally, I created a 3-D model and hole pattern of the plate the rangers will weld to their vehicles.
