I started work in the Whitesides Laboratory in October 2019 to work as an assistant for postdoctoral fellow Sam Root on the subject of pneumatically-controlled, inflatable soft robots made out of elastomer films.
The genesis behind this idea comes from the fact that first, traditional robots are made of metal -- hard, costly materials that don't provide much flexibility. Also, traditional robots often require electronics and/or electronic interfaces to function, whose complexity make them a lot more inconvenient and heavy-involvement when we're trying to build them quickly.
In nature, structures that allow locomotion are mostly soft, either hydrostatically or pneumatically controlled. They're pretty simple structures, too -- a squid tentacle is simply a muscular hydrostat, and a cricket leg is merely a pneumatic cylinder.
Soft robots are inspired by nature in that aspect. Soft materials -- made of polymer films, rubber, etc. -- can be much more easily controlled by the movement of air and/or water than hard materials, such as metal, can. Also, soft materials are generally less costly than metal, which is a plus if we're thinking about robot mass production. Broadly speaking, soft robots are simpler than conventional robots, and that makes them attractive as a research field.
Previous research in the Whitesides Group has been done to make grippers, tentacles, and walkers for soft robots.
For this project in specific, elastomer films are cheap, widely available, and stretchy, which are perfect if we want to make the robot inflatable, expanding from something as small as a couple post-its to a life-size creature. And in general, inflatable things are pretty cool: we originally had a vision of making a soft robot capable of crowdsurfing at music festivals, but other applications (tentative) include helpers for the elderly and/or disabled, or a robot for search-and-rescue missions.
Currently, the project is at the "let's see what we can create" stage. These updates chart our progress!
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