M08 - Soft Robotics

Question 1

What is soft robotics?

Answer 1

• nature as a design template
• stretchable materials
• large on passive degrees of freedom
• encode logic circuits in design/materials
• obtain external information through interactions
• smart materials

Question 2

What does the actuation (pneumatic) do?

Answer 2

• information about the object is obtained through vision
• encoding information in the structure (elastic strain + magnetization

Question 3

Give examples of actuation?

Answer 3

Electrically Responsive

Magnetically Responsive

Chemically Responsive

Thermally Responsive

Photo Responsive

Pressure Driven

Question 4

How does a controller work?

Answer 4

Receives data from sensors, processes them and sends command to the motors

Question 5

What is computation?

Answer 5

Computation is any type of calculation that include both arithmetical and non-arithmetical steps and which follow a well-defined model (e.g. an algorithm)

Question 6

What is a morphological computation?

Answer 6

A computation that can be done by the body itself (don’t need brain or a processor)

Question 7

What do sensors do?

Answer 7

Provide information about the state of the robot and external environment to the microcontroller