A couple months back, I saw the videos of Matthew Borgatti’s soft robots on the Adafruit website and was really captivated by them. They inspired me to think about building a soft robot using pneumatic pressure for motion for my final project. Plus, I was really thrilled when I found out that our guest critic last week was Matt (thank you Becky)!
CONCEPT 1- RESCUE ROBOT WORM
I looked at the locomotion of worms as one idea. Worms move by stretching out one end of their body while the contracted end holds onto the earth with little setae feet. They keep alternating this front-back stretching to propel forward. This soft robot worm that could be perhaps used for emergency situations to rescue victims that are buried in rubble, snow, mud, etc.
CONCEPT 2 – ELEPHANT TRUNK INTERACTIVE TOY
CONCEPT 3- MEDUSA TENTACLES INTERACTIVE DEVICE
CONCEPT 4- PNEUMATIC THERAPY DEVICES
One version would be a seat or bed lined with silicone bubble surface. Air pressure would push out the bubbles in a rhythmic pattern. I could see this helping patients that needed acupressure or massage therapy. Or for patients that are bed-ridden and need a moving surface to prevent bed sores. A more practical size might be a glove for the hand.
This is a Project I did last year. I tried to visualize the tiredness of our body. Based on research, for the people who always sitting in front of computers, they’re highly suggested to stand up and do some office exercise to keep their neck and backbone healthy. A lot of people know this but they always forget or too lazy to move their body.
HOW IT WORKS:
There’re bubbles place on the suit. The bubbles will be inflated in 15 minutes to remind you to take a rest. The inflation of the bubbles show how tired your body is. When the bubbles are all inflated, you need to push out the air in the bubbles. Based on the gestures of office exercise, you’re taking office exercise when you try to reach a bubble.
The second idea is a reminder for people to take a rest from the computer. Inspired by the cat-pad, the bubble is place in palm. And your fingers cannot reach the keyboard any more when it inflates.
Concept#1 is musical gloves for physical therapy. Each finger gets an instrument sound, and you can play music (compose music) by bending fingers.
Concept#2 is mittens that will warm up when you hold other people’s hand. If it is not for couples, it will be an interesting social experiment.
Concept#3 is punching art therapy. I would love to have a wall that is made out of punching bag material and a pair of boxing gloves to punch punch punch punch punch when you get stressed out or angry. To make that action rewarding and even motivating, I want to put sensor patches behind the punching wall (in a grid) and transfer the punches as input to arduino and make them into visual output.
This glove is is a special taxi glove. It is composed of two conductive threads: one on the top of the middle finger, on the inside of the hand and one on the top of the index finger, on the back of the hand. When we connect the two conductive parts, ‘TAXI’ will light up in the palm of our hand, so that taxis see us more easily during winter when it’s freezing and dark.
Todays project concept was to create an innovative switch that activates when a ball passes by it. This idea was originally inspired by the following video, which incentivised me to create an electronic musical ball slide, which would activate when the ball would hit the step, causing the step to light up.
The initial project sketches for the musical slide are shown below and involved a series of components which would act as support for the slide. LED strips would be placed in a smaller inner piece, which would be activated via Arduino when the infrared sensors would be triggered. This inner piece was split into two parts to ensure that it could be supported by the inner structure. Additionally, the components that would hold this inner piece would include a small hole at the bottom of the frame, to allow the wires to go through, with the intention of cloaking the majority of the design.
Drawing
The components were then designed in Illustrator to the measurements from the sketches and were laser cut to ensure maximum accuracy. The results of this process is shown below !
Components
The next stage of the process was the most challenging of all. How would I bend the plastic to ensure that it would match the laser cut curve ? Although I admit that I should have first bent the plastic and then laser cut the curve, I must say that this experience was extremely rewarding and satisfying. The process shown below demonstrates how the curve was achieved and is the result of four attempts !
The ‘centerpiece’ was place between a jig in such a way that the curve start point would match the edge of the jig. The piece was duct taped to the jig to ensure that little movement would occur.
Placing the Center Piece
The pipe was the attached to the jig and was placed in such a way that the centreline matches the line drawn of on the on the centrepiece. The piece was then heated up until it began to bend and was then adjusted very slowly, applying pressure from ‘centreline’-up to ensure a perfect bend.
Heating the centrepiece
For those attempting to replicate this process, please be patient. One must heat up and cool down the component various times to ensure a perfect curve. The result of this process is shown below.
That curve.
And as promised, the curves matches the bend !
Aligned to perfection.
It was at this point that I had to redesign the slide as the initial components would not allow the infrared components to sit at the right points. So I decided to scrap the inner components and go for a hollow design. Additionally, due to budget issues I decided to use big LEDs instead of LED strips as they would not require an alternate 12 V power source and could run of my computer power. Finally, due to losing my code in the last second I could not include the musical effect when the lights were triggered.
The next step involved putting all the pieces together. This was done using a duct tape to hold the piece at the right place and a glue gun to stick the parts together.
The components were then soldered to wires and were taped onto the holes to ensure that I could reuse the components at a later date. The LEDs where then also soldered onto wires and taped on off the sensors to allow them to hang off in the air, in the middle of the design, allowing maximum illumination.
I tend to leave the house and get to my destination without everything I need for the day. I will forget seemingly simple things like my keys or wallet. But, I plan on changing my forgetfulness and creating a new way to keep track of my belongings before I leave, so I can become a bit less forgetful. My project Ready, Set, Go is a new way to keep track of your belongings when at home or in the office. By connecting to your belongings with copper tape and conductive materials, each belonging you need to reminding of. So for example, you are always forgetting your favorite pen, comb, or glasses. This product its adaptable for your needs. Looking forward, this project would be able to expand into multiple avenues of reminding needs. A great example of its future scale would be the new key finder tile.
Working over eight hours a day is harmful for both your physical and mental health. People need ‘time’ to relax and take a break. Sometimes it is hard to find that moment of break when you are in time restrained task. Therefore, instead of taking a long forty minutes break, this hourglass encourage you to press pause for a little over two minutes. “2.09” is the time that the sand takes to go through both bulbs of this hourglass. User can meditate, close their eyes, or just watching the sand fell through the bulb.
A Force Sensitive Resistor switch is hidden underneath one of the bulbs. After the first spin, user has to empty the top bulb again and the weight of the sand will press onto the FSR switch. Each LED will turn on corresponding the amount of sand pressing. As three lights on the wrist band turned on, that indicates the end of the short break.
Finally, I made some adjustment on the design. I installed the LEDS to the hourglass itself, instead of a wrist band. This way user will be able to concentrate and focus only on the sand and the lights.
