Creative Soft Robotics

This week we focused on mold design for the venus fly trap leaves and electronics. We printed out 2 different molds for the venus fly trap leaves that we will be casting next week. We also cast repeats of the actuators for them for additional testing. Additionally, we weaved and embedded an electrode for the
Continue reading Progress Report 4 – Catherine & Aditti

This week focused on model validation, with 4 casts in our 3D printed molds taking place. We used the Dragon Skin 20 for each of these pours, which is the same silicone that we used in our second cast. We chose a few models to cast – curved, missing link, and two-material. We also changed
Continue reading Progress Report 4 – Dunn and Elliot

End of Week Report We finally got our molds 3D printed so we have casted the silicon into our molds. We still need to test the silicon pieces with an air pump. We have started the circuit for connecting the air pumps and Arduino, so once we know that is working it will be easy
Continue reading Week 4 Progress Report – Fiona and Gia

This week we made some important progress! As soon as we can figure out how to overcome an air-tight / air-flow problem, we should have a fully functioning individual prototype. From there, we can move forward into scaling! That will pose new problems of triggering inflation as related to what tentacle is being sensed, but
Continue reading Progress Report 4 – Elise and Leah

It seems that the design of the hinge solves the problem of power distribution to some extent. The next plan is to optimize the silicone part so that it has less bulge at the top. A better solution, for now, would be to thicken the top and bottom and then reduce the thickness of the
Continue reading Week 4 update: Maddie&Xiaofan

Last week we focused on the design for the venus fly trap actuator. We tried out a design with ridges running along the sides to allow for greater room for inflation and movement, hoping to achieve more bend with it. Our first cast failed during bonding ,leading to asymmetrical inflation. We then tried recasting another
Continue reading Progress Report 3 – Catherine and Aditti

Last Monday (3/27) we received the 3D printed parts of our updated mold as well as the hard ABS hinge. The print quality and precision was worse than we were hoping, but in light of Skylab being offline, we’ll take what we can get! Casting the ABS hinge in silicone was a success; both parts
Continue reading Week 3 Update: Maddie & Xiaofan

End of Week Report This week has been mostly testing and fixing our CAD models and trying to get them printed. We realized that our molds needed some slight changes so that they would print properly, it mostly had to do with changing the ports and tubing to fit correctly. We did a lot of
Continue reading Week 3 Report – Fiona and Gia

This week was a continuation of the work we did last week. We have refined both our modeling and FEA processes so that we can run more of our designs each week. This is allowing us to hone in on exactly what behaviors we expect to see, and allows us to choose what we want
Continue reading Progress Report 3: Dunn and Elliot

This week we were tragically pretty busy, but still managed to get some important progress done! Most notably, we were able to sync tested our first version of our silicon anemone and we made progress on programming and circuiting the electronics. We originally planned to print our newest version of the mold, but since the
Continue reading Progress Report 3 – Elise and Leah