Course Guide

Welcome to Creative Soft Robotics! In this seminar we will read current academic literature on soft robotics and art, then apply research techniques to making innovative soft kinetic sculpture. Our experiments will focus with casting silicone rubber in 3D-printed molds with pneumatic or tendon-drive actuation. This course is exploratory in nature and much of it will evolve as we go.

This course is geared toward highly autonomous students willing to explore the frontier of research. It will be reading-heavy and involve immersion in the raw discourse of an emerging discipline. Students will practice techniques for evaluating journal articles and articulating foundational research questions. We will review and critique kinetic artworks made with soft materials. Through this process we will identify cutting edge techniques to inspire new artwork.

As your instructor, I bring a wide variety of robotics and art experience. Much of soft robotics is new to me as well, so we will navigate the literature together and collectively identify realizable techniques. Other potentially feasible approaches for soft sculpture actuation and sensing include high-pressure pneumatic actuation, embedding conductive liquids for distributed sensing, incorporating rigid armatures, or closed-chamber inflatables. Together we can work out which approaches might work within our means and put them to creative uses.

Contents

• Daily Agenda Logbook
• Syllabus: Creative Soft Robotics
• Assignments
• Guide to Library Resources
• Bibliography of Soft Robotics (S25)
• Bibliography of Soft Art (S25)
• Videos of Related Work
• Non-Glossary
• Hardware and Materials
• Sample Code
• Course Resources

For reference: Search Page and Index

Course Role and History

This course is part of the Integrative Design, Arts, and Technology (IDeATe) program at Carnegie Mellon University. It is a “collaborative” course elective for the IDeATe Soft Technologies and Physical Computing programs. This course makes use of the IDeATe fabrication and lab facilities in the lower level of Hunt Library. The permanent link for the course is https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/16-480.

This course was previously offered in Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022, and Spring 2021,

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Creative Soft Robotics Spring 2025 Course Guide by Garth Zeglin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Photo credits:

• A Pacific sea nettle (Chrysaora fuscescens) at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, USA., by Dan90266, CC BY-SA 2.0.

• Inflatable robotic arm at the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, CC BY-SA 4.0.