• This past week we completed the coding for our paper robotic hand. We used the esp8266 microchip with Arduino to manually control turning the voltage (3.3 V) on and off through a web page. This will allow the SCP actuators to expand and contract when the voltage is off and on respectively. In turn, that will cause the hand to open and close, or the arm to straighten and bend.
• We were also able to successfully twist, coil, and anneal SCP acutators with the 235/34 Shieldex conductive thread. Pooja ran an experiment that attached one of the working SCP actuators to a piece of paper. Then she applied 3.3V from a DC power source and we were able to visibly see the actuator contracting and expanding and the paper being lifted and lowered in response.
• I also finished the robotic configurations for the paper hand and was able to cut it out with the Silhouette and am currently in the process of assembling all of the pieces together. I used SolidWorks, Inkscape, and Silhouette Studio to make and cut out these figures. SolidWorks was used to design the arm, palm, and fingers with correct dimensions through the drawing mode of SolidWorks. Inkscape was then used to scale the different components to the desired size, and Silhouette Studio was used to connect to the Silhouette paper cutter and get the wanted figures.
• Our next step is doing the math behind the integration of the SCP actuators into the paper robotic hand and then actually integrating them. We will need to take into account how much we want the different parts to contract (and how that corresponds to the length of the actuators as it recorded to contract 10% of the actuator's coiled length), how to connect the SCP actuators to the esp8266 microchip, and how the actuators will fit in the paper arm/hand.

Next Post Previous Post