Smart materials have, for decades, provided simple and effective approaches for combining structure and actuation (or other functions). Shape memory alloys, for example, have been used for thermally triggering mechanical actuation in space systems since the early 1980’s. Since that time, materials have been designed for every available input signal, and for myriad output responses such as light transduced into shape change. Concurrently, the field of robotics has also seen great leaps over several decades, in many cases from advances in computation and controls. Presently, there are many research groups endeavoring to create the next leap in robotic advancements from a materials approach: merging smart, responsive materials with the prior (and on-going) advancements provided by the field of robotics. These hybrid (materials/mechanistic/computational) approaches will have significant impact to fields such as HRI, biomedicine, agriculture, and space exploration to name a few. This talk will focus on our work to use these new actuators, sensors, and energy systems—from a bioinspired design lens—to add new abilities or improvements to robots. Some of the integral, multifunctional systems that will be discussed are autonomic transmission systems in powered prosthetics, synthetic afferent neural networks, distributed energy akin to cardiovascular systems, sweating actuators for thermal regulation, and haptic interfaces for VR simulations. In addition to the system demonstrations, the underlying stereolithography processes, including CLIP, will be presented, where applicable, as key to the integral design of these soft robotic systems.

Integral design of soft robots via stereolithography and CLIP

2019 Fall National Meeting

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