Multicellular Machines: A Bio-inspired approach to automated electromechanical design and fabrication
Abstract:
Designing and building robots is a labor-intensive process that requires experts at all stages. This reality is due, in part, to the fact that the robot design-space is unbounded. To address this issue, I have borrowed a simple but powerful design concept from multi-cellular organisms: the regular tiling of a relatively small number of individual cell types yields assemblies with spectacular functional capacity. This capability comes at the cost of substantial complexity in design synthesis and assembly, which nature has addressed via evolutionary search and developmental processes. I will describe my application of these ideas to electromechanical systems, which has led to the development of electro-mechanical “cell” types, automated assembly methods, and design synthesis tools. The inspiration for this work comes from ongoing collaborations with Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists. As part of this effort I have developed wildlife monitoring tools that provide unprecedented volumes of data, enabling previously intractable scientific studies of small organisms. Sensor mass, which is dominated by energy-storage, is the primary constraint for these applications, and I will discuss a time-of-arrival tracking system that is 3 orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than equivalent position tracking methods.
Bio Sketch:
Dr. Robert MacCurdy is a Postdoctoral Associate with Daniela Rus at MIT and will be an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in January 2018. He is developing new methods to automatically design and manufacture robots. As part of this work, he developed an additive manufacturing process, Printable Hydraulics, that incorporates liquids into 3D-printed parts as they are built, allowing hydraulically-actuated robots to be automatically fabricated. Rob did his PhD work with Hod Lipson at Cornell University where he developed materials and methods to automatically design and build electromechanical systems using additive manufacturing and digital materials. Funded by an NSF graduate research fellowship and a Liebmann Fund fellowship, this work demonstrated systems capable of automatically assembling functional electromechanical devices, with the goal of printing robots that literally walk out of the printer. Rob is also committed to developing research tools that automate the study and conservation of wildlife, work that he began while working as a research engineer at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology. He holds a B.A. in Physics from Ithaca College, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and an M.S. and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University.
Designing and building robots is a labor-intensive process that requires experts at all stages. This reality is due, in part, to the fact that the robot design-space is unbounded. To address this issue, I have borrowed a simple but powerful design concept from multi-cellular organisms: the regular tiling of a relatively small number of individual cell types yields assemblies with spectacular functional capacity. This capability comes at the cost of substantial complexity in design synthesis and assembly, which nature has addressed via evolutionary search and developmental processes. I will describe my application of these ideas to electromechanical systems, which has led to the development of electro-mechanical “cell” types, automated assembly methods, and design synthesis tools. The inspiration for this work comes from ongoing collaborations with Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists. As part of this effort I have developed wildlife monitoring tools that provide unprecedented volumes of data, enabling previously intractable scientific studies of small organisms. Sensor mass, which is dominated by energy-storage, is the primary constraint for these applications, and I will discuss a time-of-arrival tracking system that is 3 orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than equivalent position tracking methods.
Bio Sketch:
Dr. Robert MacCurdy is a Postdoctoral Associate with Daniela Rus at MIT and will be an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder in January 2018. He is developing new methods to automatically design and manufacture robots. As part of this work, he developed an additive manufacturing process, Printable Hydraulics, that incorporates liquids into 3D-printed parts as they are built, allowing hydraulically-actuated robots to be automatically fabricated. Rob did his PhD work with Hod Lipson at Cornell University where he developed materials and methods to automatically design and build electromechanical systems using additive manufacturing and digital materials. Funded by an NSF graduate research fellowship and a Liebmann Fund fellowship, this work demonstrated systems capable of automatically assembling functional electromechanical devices, with the goal of printing robots that literally walk out of the printer. Rob is also committed to developing research tools that automate the study and conservation of wildlife, work that he began while working as a research engineer at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology. He holds a B.A. in Physics from Ithaca College, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and an M.S. and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University.