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12. Soft robotics

Research

From what we got presented on the tutorials, we had to think about body motions, pumps, walk, blow, sit down, that has a air reaction.

I decided to work on an organic-looking kind of structure, that seemed a bit like organs and animate it through pumps in an ephemereal small sculpture.

References & Inspiration

I took some references from the tutorial that inspired me

  • Octobot project
  • Heaten nylon : can be used for my project to give it flexibility.
  • Conductive paint
  • Montserrat
  • Costume 3D printing silicone costume design dar a luz Gabriela Lotaif fabricademy Kombucha for softrobotics : luz Gabriela Lotaif
  • Modeliser en 3D pour montrer au performer ce que peut etre l’effet du costume
  • Do jellyfish use similar techniques as the paramecium?
  • you can use the inkscape embroidery plugin called inkstitch
  • Inkstitch Embroidery
  • or you can use turlestitch
  • Inflatable

Websites helps

Examples

The one I ended up using

Tools

Process and workflow

I first made some organ like little structures out of alginate.

I displayed the Calcium Chlorure on a plane surface and then made a ball of alginate with the shape i wanted and extracted the indide of it to create an organ looking small structure.

describe what you see in this image

describe what you see in this image


Step 1

Then I blowed the structure to see if it would work with an electric pump.

describe what you see in this image

As it was working in the way I wanted it to blow I had to look for the right code to get the Arduino controll the rythme of the electric pump.


Step 2

describe what you see in this image describe what you see in this image

describe what you see in this image describe what you see in this image

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Code of Biomimetic loop From Becky Marshall

int pump = 9;

void setup() {
 pinMode(pump, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
 for(int i=70; i<255; i=i+10){
 analogWrite(pump, i);
 delay(200);
 }

 for(int i=255; i>70; i=i-10){
 analogWrite(pump, i);
 delay(200);
 }
}

Results

The alginate had dried out but the pump could controll its bloating by connecting it to the Arduino Uno and the code obtained from Becky Marshall's webpage (see up). describe what you see in this image

describe what you see in this image


Fabrication files


Last update: 2023-07-02