NewProjectsFall2013

There are 4 projects that new MS students who have some time might like to get a bit more involved in:

Micro-robotic manufacturing

• Contact person: Dave Christensen.
• Brief description: We have a project in collaboration with SRI robotics to investigate magnetic micro robots that collaborate to assemble small structural components. A focus of the work at Stanford is sensing. However, we also see the need to develop some more powerful and versatile actuators on the micro-robots so that they can do some serious work. (There are quite a few papers in the literature on microrobots, but the robots don't do much besides move around.)
• Incremental Inspection for Microrobot Quality Assurance -- a paper on some of the previous and ongoing work:

Tactile sensing

• Contact person: Alice Wu
• Brief description: We have a couple of tactile sensing projects in the works. One involves tactile sensing for the Kaust underwater hand. We are leaning toward an electro-optical technology. We also have an ongoing project to develop and refine the capacitive tactile technology started in earlier work, with possible application to measuring ground reaction forces for small robots and/or measuring the shear and normal forces for gecko adhesive tiles.
• For a bit more on some ideas see: Tactile sensing for underwater hands
• A robust, low-cost and low-noise artificial skin for human-friendly robots -- a paper on some of the previous and ongoing work:

CNC machining for adhesives and SDM

• Contact person: EricEason
• Brief description: We have a brand new precision CNC with high speed spindle that we share with Prof. Lentink's group. The machine needs to be set up for doing our favorite Shape Deposition Manufacturing process and for making the precision gecko-inspired adhesives that Stickybot, the perching UAVs and Space Grippers rely on.
• A couple of papers: Microwedge Machining for the Manufacture of Directional Dry Adhesives, Dynamic Surface Grasping with Directional Adhesion

Stickybot IV

• Contact person: Elliot Hawkes
• Brief description: Stickybot III is getting a bit long in the tooth. It's time for a new, lighter, simpler and more robust successor that takes advantage of recent improvements in the adhesives. The new design should be modular and have feet that are easy to clean and replace. It should be controlled by an Arduino and use standard mechanical parts. It should be robust enough to survive a fall. In short, it should get a step closer to being a product instead of a temperamental research prototype.
• Papers: One can look at the original Stickybot publications, then look at the new, improved adhesives and also draw design inspiration from recent developments like Dash Robotics by post-doc Nick Kohut.