CURRENT RESEARCH:
I am now in the Organic Robotics Lab at Cornell. My graduate research is on fluid stiffening in soft robotics. I am particularly working on:
1) morphing robots
2) using flow batteries as both energy storage and structure
3) modeling mechanisms of stiffening in a flexible pressurized membrane.
I will put more information up once I publish some papers!
ADAPTING TO A COMPLEX WORLD
ROBOTICS
ROBOTIC THERAPY FOR STROKE PATIENTS:
Stroke patients often require extensive physical therapy to regain full arm motion. Unfortunately, therapists' time is expensive, and patients often have difficulty getting in the repitition necessary for recovery.
Dr. Wolbrecht of University of Idaho is working on a therapy robot which will support and adapt to patients as they run through exercises. I got to help by designing a comfortable and adjustable handle for the patient to interact with.
Remote Operated Pond Cleaner:
The ponds at the local arboretum are choked with weeds - this picture was taken during a relatively good month. Harvesting would solve the immediate issue and potentially help fix the underlying nutrient overload by removing biomass from the system. However, commercial weed harvesters are expensive and large.
To address this, we are designing and building a small scale remote controlled aquatic weed harvester.
Project wikipage:
Spirograph Sketcher:
I figured out how to solve for the Cartesian coordinates of points on spirographs using forward kinematics robotics equations.
I then tried applying inverse kinematics to my ME arm kit robot to get it to draw the spirograph in real life - it does better than I do by hand, but there's room for improvement...
I built the simple robot that I was modeling in the spirograph mathematics... unfortunately the laser cut wood I made it out of was a bit too flexible and made for some wobbly spirographs. But with a little work, it would be a cool toy!
