Experiments In Soft Robotics

January 19, 2020 by Gerrit Coetzee 6 Comments

[Arnav Wagh] has been doing some cool experiments in soft robotics using his home 3D printer.

Soft robots have a lot of advantages, but as [Arnav] points out on his website, it’s pretty hard to get started in the same way as one might with another type of project. You can’t necessarily go on Amazon and order a ten pack of soft robot actuators in the way you can Arduinos.

The project started by imitating other projects. First he copied the universities who have done work in this arena by casting soft silicone actuators. He notes the same things that they did, that they’re difficult to produce and prone to punctures. Next he tried painting foam with silicone, which worked, but it was still prone to punctures, and there was a consensus that it was creepy. He finally had a breakthrough playing with origami shapes. After some iteration he was able to print them reliably with an Ultimaker.

Finally to get it into the “easy to hack together on a weekend” range he was looking for: he designed it to be VEX compatible. You can see them moving in the video after the break.

Continue reading “Experiments In Soft Robotics” →

The Dyson Awards Definitely Do Not Suck

November 8, 2019 by Kristina Panos 32 Comments

Named after British inventor James Dyson of cyclonic vacuum cleaner fame, the Dyson Awards are presented annually to current and recent students of engineering, industrial design, and product design, regardless of age. Students from 27 countries work alone or in groups to describe their inventions, which are then judged for their inventiveness, the production feasibility of their design, and the overall strength of the entry itself.

Much like our own Hackaday Prize, the Dyson Awards encourage and highlight innovation in all areas of science and technology. Some ideas help the suffering individual, and others seek to cure the big problems that affect everyone, like the microplastics choking the oceans. The Hackaday spirit is alive and well in these entries and we spotted at least one Hackaday prize alum — [Amitabh]’s Programmable Air. I had fun browsing through everything on offer, and you will too. This is a pretty good source of design inspiration.

Continue reading “The Dyson Awards Definitely Do Not Suck” →

Friday Hack Chat: Air Hacking

October 24, 2018 by Brian Benchoff 1 Comment

The field of soft robotics sure seems a lot less mature than your standard servo motor and metal framed robot arms. Maybe that’s because building a robot to flex is harder, and maybe it’s because the best methods of constructing soft robotics have only been around for a decade or so. Maybe, though, it’s because it’s hard to control air.

For this week’s Hack Chat, we’re going to be discussing Air Hacking with [Amitabh Shrivastava]. [Amitabh] is a grad student at ITP, NYU studying creative technology, where he makes interactive art, tools for research, and experiments with various materials. Lately he has been developing Programmable-Air, a pneumatic controller for soft robotics. We’ve seen his work at ThiMaker Faire, and it’s an awesome project in this year’s Hackaday Prize.

In this chat we will be talking about DIY soft robotics. Soft robotics is a growing field with a lot of low hanging fruits within grasp of the hobbyist maker. In addition to sharing experience and resources about building your own soft robots, we will talk about actuation! Tune in to see how you can use pneumatics in your next project.

During this week’s Hack Chat, we’ll be discussing:

Pneumatics
Programmable Air
Soft Robotics
Methods of adding pneumatics to your project

You are, of course, encouraged to add your own questions to the discussion. You can do that by leaving a comment on the Air Hacking Hack Chat and we’ll put that in the queue for the Hack Chat discussion.

Our Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Friday, October 26th, at noon, Pacific time. If time zones got you down, we have a handy time zone converter.

Click that speech bubble to the right, and you’ll be taken directly to the Hack Chat group on Hackaday.io.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.