TY - CONF
T1 - Rapid Prototyping Dynamic Robotic Fibers for Tunable Movement
AU - Kolvenbag, Jay
AU - Bruns, Miguel
AU - Winters, Amy K.M.
PY - 2022/10/28
Y1 - 2022/10/28
N2 - Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are promising shape-changing actuators for soft robotics in human–computer interaction (HCI). Current LCE manufacturing processes, such as fIber-drawing, extrusion, and 3D printing, face limitations on form-giving and accessibility. We introduce a novel rapid-prototyping approach for thermo-responsive LCE fIber actuators based on vacuum molding extrusion. Our contributions are threefold, a) a vacuum fIber molding (VFM) machine, b) LCE actuators with customizable fIber shapes c) open-source hackability of the machine.We build and test the VFM machine to generate shape-changing movements from four fber actuators (pincer, curl, ribbon, and hook), and we look at how these new morphologies bridge towards soft robotic device integration.
AB - Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are promising shape-changing actuators for soft robotics in human–computer interaction (HCI). Current LCE manufacturing processes, such as fIber-drawing, extrusion, and 3D printing, face limitations on form-giving and accessibility. We introduce a novel rapid-prototyping approach for thermo-responsive LCE fIber actuators based on vacuum molding extrusion. Our contributions are threefold, a) a vacuum fIber molding (VFM) machine, b) LCE actuators with customizable fIber shapes c) open-source hackability of the machine.We build and test the VFM machine to generate shape-changing movements from four fber actuators (pincer, curl, ribbon, and hook), and we look at how these new morphologies bridge towards soft robotic device integration.
M3 - Poster
ER -