A multifunctional soft robotic shape display with high-speed actuation, sensing, and control.

Shape displays which actively manipulate surface geometry are an expanding robotics domain with applications to haptics, manufacturing, aerodynamics, and more. However, existing displays often lack high-fidelity shape morphing, high-speed deformation, and embedded state sensing, limiting their potential uses. Here, we demonstrate a multifunctional soft shape display driven by a 10 × 10 array of scalable cellular units which combine high-speed electrohydraulic soft actuation, magnetic-based sensing, and control circuitry.

Miniaturized Circuitry for Capacitive Self-Sensing and Closed-Loop Control of Soft Electrostatic Transducers.

Soft robotics is a field of robotic system design characterized by materials and structures that exhibit large-scale deformation, high compliance, and rich multifunctionality. The incorporation of soft and deformable structures endows soft robotic systems with the compliance and resiliency that makes them well adapted for unstructured and dynamic environments. Although actuation mechanisms for soft robots vary widely, soft electrostatic transducers such as dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) and hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic (HASEL) actuators have demonstrated promise due to their muscle-like performance and capacitive self-sensing capabilities.

Shape-Changing Materials Using Variable Stiffness and Distributed Control.

We describe a robotic material that tightly integrates sensing, actuation, computation, and communication to perform autonomous shape change. The composite consists of multiple cells, each with the ability to control their local stiffness (by Joule heating of a thermoplastic) and communicate with their local neighbors. We also present a distributed algorithm for calculating the inverse kinematic solution of the resulting N-body system by iteratively solving a series of problems with reduced kinematics.

Will robots be bodies with brains or brains with bodies?

Biology motivates how complex functionality results from systems of simple materials.

Intelligent RF-Based Gesture Input Devices Implemented Using e-Textiles.

We present an radio-frequency (RF)-based approach to gesture detection and recognition, using e-textile versions of common transmission lines used in microwave circuits. This approach allows for easy fabrication of input swatches that can detect a continuum of finger positions and similarly basic gestures, using a single measurement line. We demonstrate that the swatches can perform gesture detection when under thin layers of cloth or when weatherproofed, providing a high level of versatility not present with other types of approaches.