{"id":1942,"date":"2020-02-16T15:28:01","date_gmt":"2020-02-16T23:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/?p=1942"},"modified":"2020-02-16T15:28:55","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T23:28:55","slug":"not-all-robots-are-hard-and-made-of-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/2020\/02\/16\/not-all-robots-are-hard-and-made-of-metal\/","title":{"rendered":"Not all robots are hard and made of metal\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Picture a robot. Seriously, close your eyes for 30 seconds and picture a robot in your head. Ok, most of you probably didn\u2019t do it but if you had, my guess is that you would have pictured something very boxy, perhaps with pincher hands, quite awkward in its movements and perhaps with a weird robotic voice pre-Siri era. Or maybe something R2-D2 like. That\u2019s definitely what comes to mind for me. Well, robots don\u2019t all look like that. In fact, some robots aren\u2019t hard and made of metal at all. Some are soft and pliable, and they\u2019re the kind that Nick Bira studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Was a career in robotics always on the horizon for Nick? Perhaps…judging by this photo of him with his home-made robot, “Mr. Klanky”.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Nick is a 3rd<\/sup>\u00a0year PhD student in the Department of Robotics working with Dr. Joseph Davidson. When asked to summarize his research into just a few words, Nick answered that he works on magnetism and soft robotics. What is soft robotics and why would we want a soft robot you may ask (I know I certainly did)? Well, soft robotics is exactly what the phrase implies \u2013 they\u2019re robots that are soft, absolutely no hard parts (or very few) to them. Why would we want a soft robot? Well, imagine if you have a small space that you need a robot to fit through, like a small hole. A soft robot can mold into the shape that you need it to. Alternatively, soft robots are becoming more and more needed and used in medical robotics. After all, you don\u2019t want some hard, klanky thing poking around inside of you and possibly causing damage. You\u2019d much rather have something that\u2019s soft, gentle, compliant and non-damaging. Another example is in instances of human-robot interactions and increasing the safety of such interactions. A big, metallic, hard robot on an assembly line could easily spin and injure a human. But a robot with arms designed like tentacles that are floppy and soft, will perhaps push you over and bruise you, but not lead to serious damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The utility of soft robotics is manifold. So why aren\u2019t they used more or why haven\u2019t you heard much of them before? Well, the challenge is how to keep the utility of a hard robot while making it soft and, by proxy, safe. In part, this is down to how the robot and its movements are controlled. Most soft robots to date are controlled by or pneumatics or hydraulics (using air or liquid pressure). The downside of these is that the soft robot has to be accompanied by bulky hard components, such as a pumps, electrical sources, batteries, or air tanks. So even though you may have this super soft, compliant robot, it comes with large apparatuses that are not soft. Kind of counter-intuitive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This is where the other half of Nick\u2019s research phrase comes in \u2013 magnetism. Magnetism has very limited usage as a tool in soft robotics and Nick thinks it should be applied more. If you\u2019re having a hard time picturing how a magnet could be used in soft robotics, then visualize this example Nick gave us. It could be used in a pincher \u2013 instead of using air pressure in inflate the pincers to open and close, you could have the fingers of the pincer be made out of stretch magnetic material that closes when exposed to a magnetic field. It seems pretty simple right? And yet, it doesn\u2019t yet exist in soft robotics. This is why Nick is exploring this possibility because he believes ideas like this could be useful building blocks, and once we have them, we can build more complicated things.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now, you may be thinking, hang on, magnets are hard, I thought this was all about soft robotics? Good thought \u2013 here\u2019s how Nick is planning to work around that. Nick is embedding iron particles, which are magnetically soft, into silicone rubber, which is a soft elastic material, to make a material that is soft and hyper elastic and when brought close to an ordinary magnet, will stick to it. However, this is only step 1. Nick is interested in creating magnetic fields within the robot rather than it only working if there is a big, hard magnet nearby. One core goal of soft robotics is to have them function on their own without needing some hard object nearby to \u2018support\u2019 it. He is still in the development and testing stages of this material, but Nick does have an application in mind. He wants to make a magneto-rheological fluid (MRF) valve that can be used in soft robots. Rather than have this valve open and shut with air pressure (which would require air tanks to accompany the robot), Nick wants the valve to open and close through a magnetic field generated by the elastic, soft magnetic material. This way everything would be compact, stretchy, and wouldn\u2019t require any additional bulky parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To hear more about Nick\u2019s research and also about his journey to OSU and more on his personal background, tune in on Sunday, February 16 at 7 PM on KBVR Corvallis 88.7 FM or\u00a0stream live<\/a>.\u00a0Also, be sure to check out his Instagram (@nick_makes_stuff<\/a> and\u00a0@nick_bakes_stuff<\/a>) and Twitter (@BiraNick<\/a>) accounts.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picture a robot. Seriously, close your eyes for 30 seconds and picture a robot in your head. Ok, most of you probably didn\u2019t do it but if you had, my guess is that you would have pictured something very boxy, perhaps with pincher hands, quite awkward in its movements and perhaps with a weird robotic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2358],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mechanical-engineering"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1942"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1948,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1942\/revisions\/1948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/inspiration\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}