Creative Soft Robotics

Paper 1: Thermally Tunable, Self-Healing Composites for Soft Robotic Applications (citation 40) Polyurethane foams and 3D-printed lattice structures were covered in wax and tested at various temperatures. The results indicated that wax-coated structures have the potential to act as a much more controllable medium for robotics, allowing for controlled changes and repairs to be made
Continue reading Reading, Searching, and Skimming

Project Objectives The objective of this project was to create an ecosystem of swimming jellyfish robots that could actuate soft tentacles underwater to produce movement. In terms of an artistic vision, we wanted to create a peaceful and calming piece. We aimed to create two types of jellyfish: one jellyfish that is fully actuated with
Continue reading Jellyfish | Jasmine and Aaron

Project Objectives VoidCrawler – Jason The main objective of this project was to create an alien creature that embodied the theme of “Void” through peculiar movement and anatomy. I wanted to offer people an experience of encountering a foreign, alien organism that blurred the lines between lifelike and lifeless. The project utilized silicone to emulate
Continue reading Crawlers | Inbar and Jason

Project Objective Our objective was to replicate microfluidics experiments from the paper ‘Venous Materials’ at a larger, more wearable scale, by using molds, silicone, and traditional bonding techniques. We wanted to explore various aesthetic effects of moving liquid from a silicone repository through a set of channels, where the motion would be actuated by physically
Continue reading Microfluidics Wearables | Sunjana and Jina

This week we worked on direct control of the jellyfish arms. We made 2 motions: “pulse” and “wiggle”. Pull will actuate and then release all arms in short succession. Wiggle will actuate one arm at a time sequentially. We used circuit python with the Pico board. Unfortunately Hunt library closed so we took the robot
Continue reading Jasmine and Aaron Weekly Report

This week our team was finally able to all be back in person 🥳👍 so we immediately went into factory mode. We tested various things including, final design, layering, and other things. As we tested, we realized that it would be much better for us to later the channels to have no fluid transmission between
Continue reading Sunjana and Jina Weekly Report 6

Sunjana: It’s been a massive inconvenience having been quarantined and barred from campus facilities from the 12th until the 22nd, however we’re hopeful that we can achieve some meaningful result with the molds we have printed. I took Jina’s design from this morning’s class and turned it into a set of 6 molds, or 3
Continue reading Sunjana and Jina Weekly Report 5

This week, we made a successful jellyfish with all 3 pumps. This is the same body as the previous week but we added more tolerance to the mold and were more careful during the bonding process. We also used the UV florescent pigment to the flap of the jellyfish and tested the effect with the
Continue reading Aaron and Jasmine | Weekly Report

Jason’s Update The latest iteration of the Void Crawler has seen changes in its air channel geometry along with a new slicing location. Although these changes may seem minimal, they seemed to greatly improve both the fabrication process and performance. From this test, it seems that the flat base helped in ensuring a good bond
Continue reading Inbar and Jason | Weekly Report 4