Reconfigurable robots:
adaptive technology for dynamic worlds
How can we be more human while in harmony with our evolving world?
Adaptation is the adjustment of organisms to their environment to improve their chances of survival. The focus of adaptive technology is to promote human autonomy, not the opposite. We need the technology to assist, complement, and facilitate our changing needs in our dynamic world.
This exhibition highlights adaptive reconfigurable robots. Their system-level intelligence characterizes them through unconventional system designs and control, novel material components, and advanced manufacturing methodologies.
These robots take a wide range of forms, including diverse scales of foldable and interactive robots, soft-hybrid rehabilitation platforms, and modular Lego-like robots. In addition, the six groups of the ME-410 Mechanical Product Design & Development class will showcase different personal robots that assist and mitigate taxing and dangerous tasks.
The robot demonstrations exemplify the current, augmented, and near-future scenarios involving consistent fundamental technologies.
Current
We digitize and transfer tactile experience to facilitate complex, repetitive, and delicate tasks. Applications in rehabilitation (demos: Tangiball, Non-Glove Haptic Glove), healthcare (demos: Soft wearables), and industrial production (demos: Flip the Unmanageable) advance performance.
Beyond
Modular robots update and reconfigure their forms and functions allowing us to invent new shapes and interactions within known and unknown worlds i.e., foreign topology, dissimilar law of physics, outer space, and the metaverse. (demos: MIROS Skimulator, MORI3, Angel Eye, 3rd Arm).
Augmented
Some tasks are impossible to realize physically due to the location, timing, and current mechanical capacity. Having an extra helping hand (demo: 3rd Arm) or physically immersive controller enables users to manipulate, meet, communicate, and experience without traveling (demos: MIROS Skimulator, OriDesk, Take a Seat, Immersive Joystick)
The exhibited reconfigurable robots are unconventionally customizable and reconfigurable to cater to diverse users, environments, and tasks in food industries, construction sites, personal living spaces, medical clinics, outer space, education, and any remote tangible experience.