Research on Actuators

by leah

Due: 3pm, Tuesday, November 15, 2011

For this assignment, you’ll research different material actuators in small teams. Each team is assigned a type of actuator and a paper that should provide a foundation for further research. For Tuesday’s class you should prepare a 3 minute presentation (note the change in time) and a blog post (on this site) that documents your research.

Your talk should include:

  • An explanation of the basic properties of the actuator, how it works, and how it’s constructed.
  • Brief reflections on how you might use the actuator in your own practice.

Your blog post should include:

  • The material covered in your talk, plus:
  • Identification of at least one supplier of the actuator (or its constituent parts). Provide information about cost and any safety concerns. You should be able to reasonably acquire material from this supplier.
  • A link to a pdf of your research presentation.

Add your blog post to the the Actuators Research category.

Groups, materials, and starter papers are given below:

Group 1. Jamming
Adedoyin Ogunniyi
Sara Hendren
Jill Sherman

Brown, E., Rodenberg, N., Amend, J., et al. Universal robotic gripper based on the jamming of granular material. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (2010).

Group 2. Pneumatics and Soft Robotics
Oz Agar
Jason Wee

Ilievski, F., Mazzeo, A.D., Shepherd, R.F., Chen, X., and Whitesides, G.M. Soft Robotics for Chemists. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 50, 8 (2011), 1890-1895.

Group 3. Thermochromic Inks and Paints
Nicole Tariverdian
Dena Molnar
Daekwon Park

Siegel, A.C., Phillips, S.T., Wiley, B.J., and Whitesides, G.M. Thin, lightweight, foldable thermochromic displays on paper. Lab on a Chip 9, 19 (2009), 2775.

Group 4. Electroactive Polymers
Timothee Boitouzet
Sam Jacoby
Farre Nixon

Petralia, M.T. and Wood, R.J. Fabrication and analysis of dielectric-elastomer minimum-energy structures for highly-deformable soft robotic systems. 2010 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), IEEE (2010), 2357-2363.

Group 5. Shape Memory Alloys
Shan Gao
Fangbing Qiu
Woong Ki Sung

Hawkes, E., An, B., Benbernou, N.M., et al. Programmable matter by folding. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, (2010).