Actuator Integration Techniques for Found Material Robotic Systems

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Degree type
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Graduate group
Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics
Discipline
Electrical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Subject
Actuator Integration
Found Materials
Joint Creation
Low Cost
Robotics
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
2023
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Carroll, Devin
Contributor
Abstract

Engineers in modern society are taught to design and build structures and robots from pre--processed materials, giving them the ability to describe the operating capacity of their structure with a high degree of certainty. From a disaster recovery and robust systems point of view, this is a severe limitation. Rather than use processed material of known mechanical properties, we investigate how to use ''found'' material, or preexisting material located at the deployment site, to build and repair new and existing systems. We begin by introducing a new design methodology for building with found materials. The methodology is compared with the standard engineering design process to identify the areas where a user must deviate from the standard practice. We investigate two of these deviations, focusing on material identification and designing with that material as well as actuator integration with the found materials. The work uses experimental results to validate the actuator integration, using both wood and ice as structural bases. We review current research in the field of found materials and self--replication before presenting our work. Our contributions include a design methodology for using found material, techniques to design structures from found material, and actuator integration with ice and wood. We summarize these techniques through the construction of a variety of robots and structures including StickBot, a flexible robotic system; IceBot, a ground--based rover vehicle from ice; and an ice arm capable of cutting blocks of ice into arm segments for future use. %In using found material, this work (1) makes robotics and engineering more accessible and (2) is a step toward enabling self--replication and self--reconfiguration with found materials.

Advisor
Yim, Mark
Date of degree
2023
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Journal Issue
Comments
Recommended citation