Mechanical Engineering Friday Seminar
Multifunctional Materials with Tunable Rigidity for Soft Robotics
Seminar Speaker: Prof. Wanliang Shan
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Conventional robots are made of rigid components that don’t match the elastic compliance of our natural skin and tissue. While appropriate for industrial applications in a laboratory setting, they are not typically designed for human interaction. As more and more soft robots or co-robots enter our workplaces, hospitals and homes, we need to eliminate the mechanical mismatch by replacing conventional rigid materials with new soft materials with tunable functionalities, especially tunable elastic rigidity, to simulate muscle-like functionality. Using onboard heating approach, we first
developed rigidity tunable composites made of commercial soft elastomers, low melting point alloys and shape memory polymers. We focus on not only the design but also the scalable fabrication methods involved in developing these rigidity tunable composites. Numerical modeling is also conducted to explore the potential and limitation of this design approach based on onboard Joule heating. Taking insights from the modeling results, we have also come up with new simplified geometrical design of the composite and invented new materials that can enable such simplified design. We demonstrate their use in a biomimetic soft finger, which would otherwise involve fabrication of multiple pneumatic channels and attachment of supporting hardwares. Towards the end we will discuss the implications of these experimental and modeling discoveries for design of better wearable robots.
Friday, October 3, 2014 at 10:00 am
Davidson Math and Science Center, 104
1055 Evans Avenue, Reno, NV 89512, USA
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