Day 3: (Wed Jan 25, Week 2) Lateral Literature Search

Notes for 2023-01-25.

Administrative

• If you’re having trouble with off-campus access, please remember the Carnegie Mellon University VPN.

• Note: I’m collating your collected citations in the course Bibliography of Soft Robotics (S23).

New Assignments

• Due Sunday night: Exercise: Peer Review

• Looking ahead: next week we’ll survey art literature related to soft kinetic sculpture.

Agenda

1. Concept vocabulary.

   • unfamiliar terms (below)

   • Non-Glossary

2. Review of lateral search exercise posts.
   
   

3. Mid-class break.
   
   

4. Breakout session. A critical step in research is clearly identifying the constituent questions essential for solving a problem. This process can also be applicable to design and art inquiries.

   1. Say hello, introduce yourselves.

   2. Choose a human application of soft rubbery robots. As a reminder, here are a few topics raised last class:

      • microscopic machines

      • making tiny things big

      • hand-holding

      • head massage

      • prosthetics

      • joint rehab

      • wearables

      • clothes

      • performance tracking shoes

      • human interfaces

      • exoskeletons

      • full body support

      • soft robots crawling through pipes

   3. Identify several questions which need to be resolved to find an innovative solution. Some prompts:

      1. What kind of solution is possible by combining known means and methods?

      2. What novel means would improve the result? This might include hypothetical new materials, fabrication processes, sensors, actuators, algorithms, or analytic techniques.

   4. Choose one idea for a novel means and formulate a concept for an experiment or test which would develop it.

   5. Discussion with class.
      
      

5. Discussion of peer review and new assignment.

Unfamiliar Terms (collected)

Young’s modulus

actuator

control theory

inverse kinematics

pneumatics

hydraulics

continuum deformations