Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am continuing my research on my design for a personal robot. Let’s get started!
Situation Overview
In my last post on this subject, I introduced my overarching vision for an open source social robot aimed primarily at hobbyists at or around my skill level as of when I first got serious about this project: familiarity with Linux, a little experience with 3D printing, and the perseverance to see it through. This will not a beginner’s project. But that doesn’t mean I can’t plan on lowering the barrier to entry.
When all is said and done and I have my completed plans, any master level hobbyist is more than welcome to assemble one resistor by capacitor by electrode should he see fit. That doesn’t mean I won’t be able to arrange already cut or assembled circuit boards for those who need it. I might also arrange kits for people who just want to assemble their own robot from parts, and I can even possibly open up orders for fully assembled units.
HASEL Actuators
A major concern I’m designing around is cost. Motors are loud, bulky, and as expensive as they can be precise. Artificial muscles can typically be made for pennies on the dollar while offering a lot more design flexibility. They are, however, an overall younger technology.
While there are multiple possible designs floating around, I’ve been reading up on Hydraulically Amplified Self-healing ELastomeric actuators (HASEL), a relatively new technology within the relatively new field of artificial muscles. Imagine a baggie partially filled with oil. Paint or otherwise affix some flexible electrodes to magnetically squish together when a high voltage is applied, and you get the basic idea. The oil pushes out the sides of the baggie, causing the whole thing to contract lengthwise. There have been multiple generations of designs, each with its own improvements, drawbacks, and studies [1]. It makes for some very dense reading when authors use big words to talk about all of them at once.
My goal for right now is to start prototyping this month. Even if I don’t have a high voltage power supply to work with by then, I’m bound to learn something.
Citation Needed
To date, when I’ve needed to credit a work, I’ve listed a name in my text and thrown in a link. Citation was often my least favorite part of writing a paper, but I’ve decided that if I’m looking to be a little more serious about this blog, I really should start using appropriate citations when referencing things.
As I was finishing up this post, I looked up the format. School will teach MLA and APA as a given and Chicago if they’re up for some variety. It’s all a matter of what standard is being used in the field you’re writing for. From now on, I shall be using the IEEE standard as I am writing for the field(s) of technology and computer science.
Of note, the work cited in this post is actually one I’ve been digesting since at least early March, before it’s inclusion in a journal last month. I’ve accessed it multiple times, but I haven’t kept track of it. My father finally made a hard copy this week, so I’m “accessing” it from there in terms of citation.
In all reality, I don’t have a teacher marking me down for imperfect citations. The real goal is to let you guys know enough so it should be easy(TM) find whoever I’m talking about, even if a link dies. I’m also limited by what I can coax WordPress into doing, so proper indentation is not happening any time soon. I tried it. It broke the brackets.
Final Question
My post lengths vary quite a bit. About how long do you think I should aim for in terms of word count?
Work Cited
[1] P. Rothemund, N. Kellaris, S. Mitchell, E. Acome, and C. Keplinger “HASEL Artificial Muscles for a New Generation of Lifelike Robots—Recent Progress and Future Opportunities” Nov. 2020 Advanced Materials vol. 33, issue 19, May 13, 2021 Available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202003375. [Accessed: June 6, 2021]