450: Swimming Through Nutritious Slurry

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2y ago 1:06:20

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Kari Love joined us to talk about soft robotics, robots in religion, and squishiness.

Kari co-authored Soft Robotics: A DIY Introduction to Squishy, Stretchy, and Flexible Robots. Her website is karimakes.com. She was previously on Embedded 189: The Squishiness Factor

One of the pneumatic drives that we mentioned was a Hackaday Prize Winner: FlowIO. Another was the Soft Robotics Toolkit. However, Kari recommended Amitabh Shrivastava’s Programmable Air (Crowd Supply page for Programmable Air).

Some search terms for getting started with soft robotics: “DIY Jamming gripper”, “Positive pressure gripper”, and “bendy straw robot joints”. (That last one leads you to the delightful video Make a Robotic Hand with Straws.)

Polysense conductive dye for making sensors out of found objects. (On Hackaday.)

Simulation of Soft Bodies in Real World Applications (for squish and stretch) include SOFA, Abaqus, and DiffPD.

Transcript

An incomplete list of power systems people have used for generating soft robotic motion:

Pneumatic - air and vacuum

Hydraulic - using liquid

Electrical - using currents

Thermal - using temperatures

Cable control - using motor control

Magnetic - using magnets

Chemical - using reactions

Photonic - using light

Biological - using living cells

Hybrid systems - multiple sources in tandem

An incomplete list of things people have used to make soft robots:

Fabric

Silicone or other rubbers

Flexible plastic

Plastic films

Metallic films

Paper

Carbon fiber

Silly Putty

Shape-changing alloys

Electroactive polymers

Liquid metals

Gelatin or Gluten

Cell tissue

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