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Soft Robotics Week 1

PREVIOUS WORK
Here’s a link to a project that I was particularly proud of. It’s an afrofuturistic, food centric piece that exhibited in January of last year.

Tree Tank imagines a future people of colour who are actively addressing food sovereignty. They want to feel connected to their heritage through the food that they eat while avoiding the oppression that comes with the growth, production and transit of that food from its country of origin to their plate. As a population of free people, they strive to circumvent the social, economical enslavement of all sectors by designing and fabricating solutions to their own needs. This community of the future is connected to their ancestral roots through their advanced knowledge of bio cultures, botany and plant cultivation. They designed this Tree Tank, using accessible materials, to emulate the natural climate of this Jamaican Orange Tree so that they can harvest fruit right in their very own home. Foggers are timed to regulate humidity and light strips are used to adjust the light levels. The screen displays stats on the atmospheric conditions of the incubator and allows the user to upload setting adjustments should they wish to house a different foreign plant from their culture. 

SOFTNESS EXPLORATIONS

Maya and I explored Michael’s to do this exercise.

These balloons were interesting for seemingly obvious reasons. Their elasticity and ability to return to their original shape relatively reliably would be helpful. I also think that they have a large amount of grip and the possibility of writing/printing on them to denote their purpose in a factory setting seem to be something that would be important in certain use cases.

These are literally soft robots! Mostly posted here for the novelty 🙂
Here are some silicone shapes used for baking. I thought these were interesting because they are super thick and robust so they can return to their original shape without much effort. Their more impressive quality is that they can withstand high levels of heat!
These were cool because each individual piece has some kind of springy nature but all together they make up a package that can be compressed and somewhat return to it’s shape. Also – you can totally light these on fire!
I chose these pillows because of their capacity to be build into a network or a web by tying together the corner strings. They are obviously also squishy.
Giant bouncy balls! These were really fun and endlessly grippy and springy.
This was an interesting discovery because the image depicts the benefit of using this for soft robotics. The fiber fill at the top of the image seems to have had all the air vacuumed out of it, compressing it to a much smaller size than the bundles near the bottom of the image.
I think these are most interesting for the ability to be woven together to create a compressible web, network or broad surface.
Loved these foam brushes because of their mixed media properties. Their wooden stick gives it some structural integrity or ability to be mounted to a large structure.
This is pony lace. Beyond being awesome because of its brightness, it’s also super rubbery and has a certain amount of strength when stretched.
Squishy toys! Super robust, crushable internal structure that reliably returns to it’s form.
I thought that these were interesting because they are made of foam but also super malleable and sticky. I’m not sure what context that would be helpful but it seems note worthy.
Hmmm this one might be wrong but it’s articulating properties made me think that it would be important to soft robotics at some point. I suppose it can act as the elephant trunk examples that we looked at in class.
Pom pom garlands seem like they would be important because of their rope-like qualities and the idea that, if you burned them, the different sections would burn at different speeds.
I really like these as an idea because, in addition to being squishy, they are porous and can take on water which could help the way in which they sink and interact with their environment.

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