12. Soft robotics
soft robotics by BOR by Batool Alrushdan
During this week I was researching on specific field in robotics, the soft robotics. Unlike rigid robots we are mostly used to, soft bodied robots have similarities and performance characteristics similar to living organisms or the human body.
Soft-robotics are based in Bio-inspired design or biomimicry and have applications in wearables, rehabilitation prosthetics, surgical robots, rescuing and others. I focused on the fabrication of soft actuators, sensors and grippers using novel materials, artificial muscles and performative locomotion design.
The Highlight of this week was experimenting on bio exploration drafting my own Bio silicone - embedding food waste from olives (usually thrown in the garbage at the end process of extracting Olive Oil) so instead of throwing this garbage here I am making soft-robotics out of them and ill explain below how I did it
Inspiration
I was inspired for this assignment by 2 things/sites from Jordan:
- Dead sea crystalline formation
- Aqaba sea and it's creatures
As an architect I had had been researching the Applications of such soft-robotics in wearable architecture and architecture of the body "eg. Aposema -Soft robotic mask (Aposema; a Masters thesis project made by Adi Meyer, Sirou Peng and Silvia Rueda, as part of the interactive architecture lab in the Bartlett, supervised by Yuri Suzuki and Ruairi Glynn, 2017)"
and I got really interested in the body architecture concept as an application
read more about Aposema: Identity Altering Face Prosthesis
Technology is playing a growing role in extending our physical senses and abilities, constantly modifying and deforming our bodies. One of the oldest examples of body extensions is clothing. An ancient technology developed for protection, that with time became such a strong social convention, that it is now illegal in most countries to be without it. A contemporaneous example of technology extending our bodies is the smartphone; a device so essential that it is never left out of our sensory periphery. Since the advent of the digital age this phenomenon has accelerated. Over the last two decades, more and more research and investment have been dedicated to the development of wearable technologies, causing cyborg imagery of the previous century’s science fiction cinematography and literature to slowly become reality. As the boundaries between the biological and the synthetic blur, the restrictions of our predefined human form are breaking. Along with our bodies, our identities are becoming fluid and dynamic. They are constantly altered to suit our surroundings. What if in the near future we would live our lives wearing face prostheses that cover our faces in the same manner in which we cover our bodies with clothing nowadays? What if we were forced to wear masks at all time or access to masks was limited to the social and economic elite? What if we were no longer restricted to our singular, biologic, permanent, birth face? This article seeks to explore the following questions; if identity is fluid, how could a responsive face prosthesis, as a means of dynamic body alteration, change the wearer’s social identity? Could a prosthesis as such, that adds a layer of flexibility to the wearer’s physical identity, influence the wearer’s perceived personality? How would these prosthetic extensions be designed?
you can read even more in the references below
Aposema // Concept Video from APOSEMA on Vimeo.
References
- Aposema: Identity Altering Face Prosthesis
- Soft Actuators for Soft Robotic Applications: A Review
- SOFT ROBOTICS FOR ARCHITECTS
- Inflatable Fabrics
Concept development + Design
1. Initial Test design
Firstly I started experimenting with regular bubbly shapes AKA circles
1. Constant sizes of circles grid
2. Varying sizes of circles and oval in an irregular distribution
for this assignment I used
I just draw 2 samples regular circles grid and one random irregular circles aka oval=
Another variable tested was the channels to compare efficiency in delivering the air so I made 2 versions
1. One 2.5 mm as Channel size
2. One 5 mm as Channel size
was exploring on rhino
Initially I designed the molds to be rectangular so I can cut slices for the boarders in order to save materials (acrylic) Finally changed the outer design of the mold into something more circular to be more organic and wasn't much more of a difference as the molds are micro small! As a result small molds Design mimicking the crystals of dead sea with their varying real geometries ( as some bubbly dead sea crystals are regular and some are irregular)
1. Final Dead Sea Actuator design
Concept Development:
after the initial tests I was seeking more inspiration between the Dead sea and Aqaba sea and I was looking for weird sea creatures for real as I didn't want the cliché octopus or the cliché star or whatever I wanted something more unique with some bubbly spheres
so decided to create my own creature coming out of Dead Sea (as no animals live there due to it's very salty water as a result there are no rules and I can make up my own creature my own design which can be a fusion of designs as well)
conclusion to the Design development:
Most importantly I was just inspired from the above sites and sea creatures and how bubbly the dead sea crystals are … they form somehow like a shell and you feel there's a layer of liquid inside … I was playing with shapes like a deconstruction of some animal creatures (eg. Starfish) plus for the channels "the corridor" like somehow has this Arabic distribution taken from the Islamic Arabic geometries and at the tips you see bubbly shapes inspired from the dead sea crystals .
I wanted to experiment how this fusion of shapes and inspo would end up moving (so opposite to the engineering strategy of defining how you want a soft robotic to behave and move engineers would design the soft robotic accordingly NO I was doing from a designer explorer point of view so I did it the opposite way of having fusion of shaped and inspo merged together THEN see how would it behave or do once inflated like ART or maybe it could be a new thing! )
Fabrication
Vinyl Prototype
BOM bill of materials:
- Vinyl sheets
- baking paper
- Scissors
Machines: - Hot press - Laser - Vinyl cutter
From the class notes from Lily Chambers and Adriana Cabrera. I think this Illustration sums up the procedure that I was trying to
we design where the air goes to so design the champers - shiny part out
so here I was mimicking the crystalline formation of the Dead sea with just irregular circles connected and these what I want to inflate
- I was sticking to my inspiration so at first I did put the bubbly crystals of the deadsea on inkscape and tried to trace bitmap to check the possibilities of extracting geometries out of it and I started tracing the outline of it
- The multimeter in hand helping me design the channels connecting the bubbles
- moved the design to computer and laser cut a paper as my reference to cut the Vinyl by hand
- Laser cut the baking sheets
- Tried to keep them in place ready to be sealed
- Hot press tp seal
- Sealed wrong position it moved a bit so I can't blow in the channels but it's too late already sealed so failed
- so as all the laser cutting I selected the outline curves I wanted to laser cut … added them another layer that I call "Laser" where I have the settings:
display color : Red
Linetype : Continuous
Print color: Red
Print width: Hairline
to make it recognized on the Trotec Software as I defined there the red color is cut
pressing CTRL + P to print then it would be sent to the Trotec software
Power: 100
Speed: 0.5
Frequency: 1000
- After that as you can see I wanted to continue this procedure with digital fabrication fully! so I used the Vinyl cutter this time to cut Vinyl sheet
Using inkscape software, I loaded the file into Cutstudio Software … here for the first time I don't need to make stickers out of the Vinyl so the cut needs to go until the end that's why I modified the cutting force from the software as seen plus adjusted the height of the cutter manually (Z axis) but not a lot as I did not want to ruin the bed nor the cutter so I placed a white paper sheet under the Vinyl sheet as well
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Then used scissors as well to finish any uncut cuts (remember because I didn't want to pressure the bed nor the cutter a lot)
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As you can see the Vinyl sheets of the drawing and its mirror cut via the Vinyl cutter plus the baking paper cut via laser cutter ready to be sandwiches assembled together
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Last time I hot pressed the Vinyl sheets and the baking paper moved so it got stuck in wrong position and I wasn't able to blow! So it wasn't sealed as planned! As a result this time I wanted t help in that matter by using a little of Scotch Tape to preserve their position IN PLACE
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close up image to the orientation of the channels
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Place the sandwich made above between 2 baking sheets
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Sealing the Vinyl in the hot press
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I used random baking sheets I found at the lab and it had some epoxy left overs so it did melt on piece and temperature was high like 240 (as previously didn't seal so I wanted to increase the temperature so I don't do it more time but obviously such a bad idea) so all in all it got burnt! Failed again LOL
so this image is a kind reminder for all the future projects regarding the temperature LOL
Silicone Prototype
when it comes to silicone soft-robotics the elasticity of the silicone/ the cast material in the mold matters
Zoomed in image for the First molds laser cut ready to be glued
Step backward … listing below all steps of workflow in sequence below:
- Laser cut the acrylic for the test design (as I said I had carrying circle sizes as well as the channels to test which works better but lets say in the second one I did exaggerate with the thickness of the second channels they were extra larger into it doesn't show a lot the bubbly effects I was looking for due to bigger channel sizes)
- Glue them using chloroform
- Laser cut the second fusion design, both design phases cut acrylic with the following settings:
Laser settings:
Power: 90.0
Frequency: 10000
Speed: 0.4
- Gather the pieces and glue
- Started pouring Part A of the silicone to measure
- Measured almost 100 g of Part A
- Measured almost 100 g of Part B
- Brushing the molds with releasing agent (so it would easier to demold) and then adding the silicone mix (after mixing part A and B very well!)
- Wait until cured keep observing them then you can demold (I left it over night then demold) after demolding I put them on a clean smooth surface then put silicon in between to cover the 2 parts together
- Then I added silicon by pouring on the sides of the outlines to make sure it would be FULLY SEALED
Casting ratio 1:1
1 A: 1 B
BOM bill of materials Ecoflex™ 00-30
- 100 g A
- 100 g B
After weight mix together in s different clean pot try to add all quantities no matter how sticky mix well and pour in molds quickly from a distance to avoid bubbles with thin hair like
you see above how the channels were too big! so were disturbing the bubbles appearance
Bio Soft robotics Prototype (Biosilicone)
Based on lecture notes by Lily Chambers and Adriana Cabrera
another recipe from the lecture notes by Lily Chambers and Adriana Cabrera
I wanted to try making very flexi bio material to try this bio soft robotics where im as well using food waste that i got from left overs in our farm (this waste waste was created at the end process of extracting Olive oil from olives from the farm trees) from Irbid-Jordan
However regarding the workflow I modified my own recipe and own proportion because I have food waste here!
Recipe
ratio 1:1:2
1 Glycerin : 1 Gelatin : 2 Water
BOM bill of materials:
- 200 g Water
- 100 g Gelatine
- 100 g Glycerin
- half table spoon of olives waste (from farm)
Procedure: 1. Mix and Warm up the water and olives waste together until warm (maximum 8o C) 2. Add Plasticizer Glycerine 3. Add Gelatine 4. Mix on heat for 5 minutes 5. Pour on acrylic molds
in terms of attaching the 2 parts wasn't the best as the over al bio soft robotics was sealed from the outside however the inside details were so hard to attach (as I re-heated the gelatine recipe and used it to attach and somehow get dry easily so mega hard to use as a glue! didn't give me enough time to spread before drying)
Electronics
Here are the components used
So as a start we were using the lecture notes and this schematic diagram to follow up our electronics connection - following schematic from the lecture notes of Adriana Cabrera
Afterwards, checking connectivity between all connections to double check using the multimeter as dealing with the copper tape might be a bit tricky in terms of losing the connecting in one point or another
