Design and Summary Analysis Draft 1

 

According to the article, “Soft Robotic Arm…” (2020), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a soft robot that can know its position in a 3D environment that uses its sensorized skin. One the future goal of soft robots is to able to make artificial limbs that can more decorously in manipulate objects on the environment. “Think of your own body: You can close your eyes and reconstruct the world based on feedback from your skin,”(Rus,n.d).

Soft robots have an advantage compared to robots with the traditional rigid design. Because of its infinite number of movements that the soft robots are able to make at any time it needs a flexible sensor. They do not rely on cameras to provide feedback which is unideal for actual soft robot applications.

These soft robots use soft sensors that are conductive silicone sheets that had been cut into kirigami patterns. These soft sensors have “piezoresistive” properties, that are able to change in electrical resistance when it is been strained. When the soft sensors are been deforms as the soft robots are stretching and compressing the electrical is been converted into an output voltage that’s is then used as a signal correlation to that movement. Soft sensors is able to fabricated using off the shelf materials.

One soft robot is been comprised of three segments each segment comprises four fluidic actuators in a total of 12 to move the soft robot arm. The soft sensor is been fused one sensor over each segment. Each soft sensor is covering and gathering data from one embedded actuator in the soft robot. The soft sensor is been fused using plasma bonding. Plasma bonding is a technique that energizes a part of a surface of the soft sensor material to make a bond to another material. Using a handheld plasma bonding device it take a couple of hours to shape many of sensors that can able to bond with the soft robots.

At MIT computer science and artificial laboratory (CSAIL) they want to use these soft robots for instance are able to orient and control automatically by themselves. They want these soft robots to pick items up and interact with the environments as it will be the first step toward a more sophisticated automated control.

Soft robots have its ability to have an infinite number of movements due to that it has its limitation in the “control”. MIT researchers built a neural network that is able to do away with most of the heavy lifting by filtering out the noise to capture useful feedback signals. Now MIT researchers have developed a new type of soft robots that reduces the number of variables needed for their latest model to process.

Soft robots need more testing in real world environments to have a final design. In an experiment that took place an hour and a half the researchers did the soft robots swing around and extend themselves in random configurations. The researchers used the traditional motion capture system to collect date from the soft robots movement.

MIT researchers also want to explore new sensor designs to improved sensitivity to develop new soft robot models. These new soft robots are able to have deep-learning and improved sensitivity that will reduce the required training for all new soft robots. The current neural network and sensor skin are not sensitive to capture subtle motions or dynamic movements. It the first step in learning the based of approach in making a soft robotic control. “Like our soft robots, living systems don’t have to be totally precise. Humans are not precise machines, compared to our rigid robotic counterparts, and we do just fine,” (Truby,n.d).

Matheson, R. (2020, February 16). Soft Robotic Arm Uses Flexible Sensors To Understand Its Position control engineering.

Retrieved from www.controleng.com/articles/soft-robotic-arm-uses-flexible-sensors-to-understand-its-position/

Modic, E. (2020, February 21). Soft Robotic Arm Uses Flexible Sensors To Understand Its Position.

Retrieved from www.todaysmedicaldevelopments.com/article/3d-robot-skin-flexible-sensors-artificial-intelligence-mit/

Mod, S. (2020, March 4). New "Sensitized" Skin Gives Robots A Better Sense Of Motion.

Retrieved from www.engineersgarage.com/news/new-sensitized-skin-gives-robots-a-better-sense-of-motion/

Matheson, R. (2020, February 15). "Sensorized" Skin Enables Soft Robotic Arm to Feel Its Own Way At MIT.

Retrieved from www.therobotreport.com/sensorized-skin-enables-soft-robotic-arm-feel-own-way-mit/