Accessible Soft Robotics Education with Re-configurable Balloon Robots
Soft robotics requires effective tools to educate the next generation of engineers and researchers. Stemming from a lack of universally accepted principles for education and with high barriers to entry in terms of fabrication and hardware, education to date has been highly ad hoc. We present a low-cost toolkit based on re-configurable balloon which allows rapid development of soft yet functional robots. This provides practical demonstrations of key soft robotic principles including: morphology, stiffness control, controller dependencies and modulation of environmental interactions, while grounding robot behaviours in fundamental mechanical models. We provide a framework for assembling balloon structures, incorporating actuation and exploring interactions. A diverse set of robots have been developed to show the potential to use this balloon-bots for educational activities for undergraduate teaching or below. In particular, different modes of locomotion are shown using robots each of which has an assembly time under 5 minutes. These robots can teach skills ranging from component integration and implementation, to key soft robotic design principles and embodied intelligence.
WOS:001136907802079
2023-01-01
New York
978-1-6654-9190-7
8331
8336
REVIEWED
EPFL
Event name | Event place | Event date |
Detroit, MI | OCT 01-05, 2023 | |