Soft Robots

I’ve been working on this project for a few months, focused on changing how soft robots get designed and made. Traditionally these robots are complex to design and build, and they require and unexpectedly large amount of hand labor to stitch together. This ends up with parts being produced slowly, with small deviations from known working designs. I’ve been trying to come up with a method that allows you to design a robot in CAD, queue up the design on a powder printer, cast silicone into the printed mold, and pull out a working robot. The idea is to allow for a huge variety of geometry, experimentation, and prototypes that are quick and inexpensive to produce. I want to make the process a whole lot more like a scientific experiment, where you test and observe multiple samples while adjusting a single variable.

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Print Your Own Robot: Part 9

This will be an update on the things I’ve learned molding quadrupeds over the last couple of months and some previews of the new robots I’ll be experimenting with in the next few weeks. To start, I’ve had the chance to run a gaggle of design experiments ranging from small changes to the particular silicone I’ve been casting, to more radical changes to how the whole plionics manufacturing process comes together.

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First to Blog

This is a response, more of a high five, to Zach Hoeken’s post up on MAKE: “First to File? Nah, First to Blog!” Basically his post was a series of ideas that have been hanging around in his notebooks, possibly eligible for patents, that he would rather see out there and made in the world than locked away between the pages of a personal sketchpad forever or exploited to the chagrin of mankind by some unruly technological entity, wrapped up in complex patent labyrinths, and never put to a more just use than in sole product from a sole company (see 3d Systems vs the Form 1, Patent Busting3d printing patent challenges, etc). Even worse is the possibility of an idea getting patented and never implemented, only used as a club to hit innovators over the wallet (see Intellectual Ventures). I’m in favor of this. Truth be told I’m pretty aggressively anti patent, which is why all of my recent robotics projects have been released into the open source. Although I realize there’s a difficult road ahead, finding ways to keep funding innovation and novel IP in the world patent abolitionists have been gunning for, I believe open access to information and the network effects it generates far far and away outweigh the small innovation boost you get from researchers confident they’ll be the only people able to profit from the particular idea they’re developing.

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Print Your Own Robot: Part 8

Visit my soft robot Flickr collection for some detailed documentation and more info on the methods behind this latest robot.

Quadrupeds. I’ve been dreaming about quadrupeds. I’ve been hunting for challenges to test my methods and improve the engineering on the whole “print and cast a soft robot” thing (I really need to come up with a name for this… “Borgatronics?”). I started with tentacles because they were easy to design, easy to test, and symmetrical.

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3d Print-able Sleep No More Mask

Sleep No More is an incredible production: an immersive live performance staged on an expansive five story set inhabiting New York’s abandoned McKittrick Hotel [I have been informed that the bit about the set being built out of an abandoned hotel is just PR fluff… SNM actually takes place in a warehouse scratch built to look like an old hotel. The more you know]. I don’t need to sing its praises. Other folks have done so amply, effusively, and more successfully in other formats. Just Google it.

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Make Your Own Mechanicat

I just uploaded this little mechanical kitty to Thingiverse, and I think you should make a version for yourself. After a few trials with some cheap 1/4″ plywood, I ended up splurging on pressboard made specifically for laser cutting. The first cat I cut from the cheap ply ended up burning so much it was hard to get something functional out at the end. I blame the adhesive used to laminate the sheets. I think I might try and source some thin ply made with a natural wood glue. In the meantime, Laserbits makes some excellent laser specific stuff.

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DIY Guy Fawkes Bandana Remix Fun Pack!

The good folks at Coilhouse were kind enough to release something I’ve been working on for a bit: The DIY Guy Fawkes Bandana Remix Fun Pack Genuine Revolutionary Occupy Experience Machine!

The general idea is that I’d like people to be anonymous, wearing protection, projecting a captivating image, employing creative disruption, and in possession of crucial data whether protesting or no. I also believe in opening up the source as much as humanly possible/ethical/feasible on all of my projects.

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Block Printing Pattern – Download and Remix

A few months back I got an incredible set of printing blocks from my friend Liz. She’d taken a trip to India, bargained hard, and snagged these incredibly lovely ornate printing blocks for just a few dollars.

I have a huge collection of patterns. I visit Lost and Taken and Repper fairly often and have built up quite a store of resources over the years. I feel like I should give something back.

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