One of my favorite projects in MAKE: Soft Robotics is the Kousa. It’s a soft sensor that uses water power to turn a simple force sensing resistor into a versatile sensor that can pick up squeezing, tapping, and pressing from any angle.
The Kousa
soft robotics
Automatic Origami
I’ve been playing with origami, lately. Specifically, I’ve been exploring how to simulate, model, and fold origami shapes in ways that could be automated to create useful mechanisms. The system I’ve come up with is designed to fold rip-stop nylon, a material I’ve worked with at both Makani Power and Super-Releaser.
After some experiments with programs designed specifically for generating origami patterns, I found I wasn’t able replicate the patterns I’d prototyped in paper. Since I wanted to start out with a paper prototype, do some bench tests, and move to CAD from there, I needed to consider other options. I also wasn’t able to convert the output into a format that would play with CAD for printing and prototyping the resulting forms. So, I fell back on my old standard: SolidWorks. If you’ve worked with me before or you’re a regular reader, you don’t get any bonus points for guessing I’d find a way to turn this into a SolidWorks project. This video was very helpful for understanding how to think about origami in a SW context.
Continue reading3D Printed Syringe Static Mixer
I developed this static mixer design to streamline casting demos. Often times, a casting demo can get bogged down with portioning, mixing, and degassing, especially when you’re trying to have a group of students get hands-on time with the casting materials.
Continue readingSpeaking about Soft Robots at NASA Ames
Mark Micire (research scientist at the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames) and Yun Kyung Kim (human-robot iInteraction designer at NASA Ames) were incredibly generous in offering me an opportunity to speak with the AstroBee and Super Ball Bot groups at NASA Ames. We’ve been keeping an eye on Super Ball Bot over at Super-Releaser, particularly because of the way the teams working on it are bringing simulation and iterative prototyping together to solve the open-ended problems involved in designing a robust control system for bots that can configure themselves into nearly infinite shapes.
Continue reading“Iterating on Soft Robots” talk at Maker Faire
Kari Love and I gave a talk at Maker Faire last year detailing how the maker mindset (tinkering to get an intuitive sense of the rules governing the system, hands-on learning, fast frugal iteration, and sharing) can be transformative for research into fundamental technologies and chronically intractable problems.
The key factor is going from zero to a working understanding of the ground truths underlying the problem you’re trying to solve as quickly as possible. From historical surveys of how transformative technologies have been developed in the past (like TRIZ), deeply focused research is no match for playful learning and interdisciplinary exploration.
Continue readingSuper-Releaser has signed a book deal with Maker Media
Super-Releaser has begun work on a book on soft robotics for Maker Media. Kari Love and I are writing a book that provides a history of the field of soft robotics, tutorials demonstrating its basic principles, more sophisticated projects like a control system and entire soft robots, and the potential of applied soft robotics from medical devices to human spaceflight to interplanetary exploration. As far as we can tell this will be the first book published demonstrating practical soft robotics.
Continue readingSpeaking about R&D architectures for novel technologies at JHU APL’s REDD talks series
Jacob Alldredge invited me to speak at APL to speak with their research staff as part of their REDD Talks series. I presented a talk on the research process Kari Love and I developed at Super-Releaser for rapidly evaluating and developing novel technologies: The Physical Feedback Loop.
“My Robot Will Crush You With its Soft Delicate Hands!” talk at 32C3
I’ve been going to CCC for years, but this is the first time I’ve gotten a talk accepted in one of the main venues. It was thrilling to share my research with such a wide audience. I spoke about the kinematics of soft bodied organisms, designing soft robots, and future applications for compliant mechanisms. Below is a complete video of the talk and the Q&A session afterwards.
Continue readingTalking Compliant Mechanisms at NYU
Yesterday I gave a talk about incorporating soft robotics, compliant mechanisms, and biomimetic structures into your engineering toolbox at NYU. I’ve been interested in how compliant mechanisms can reduce the computational complexity of tasks like manipulation and locomotion and this talk was a good opportunity to share some of my ideas on the subject.
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