I worked on developing the GUI for a combined soft printed pneumatic actuators and variable stiffness knitting. Soft robots and actuators lose a lot of their force through isometric inflation, so we used a knit sleeve to isolate and focus the force in a single direction. My team showed that using this new design paradigm allowed us to reach forces up to 40N for a single actuator, way above the threshold of 10N necessary for haptic feedback.

The CHARM Lab team implemented this strategy in designing a sleeve for social touch, that could transmit a series of signals ranging from single pokes, to brushes, to complex emotions such as happiness, attention, or love. We showed through a human subject study that those could be recognized with a level of certainty far above chance.

I'm holding the PortFlow8, which is a system that holds the Arduino RF Sense microcontroller, as well as the airpumps for the valves.

As I connect the Arduino code and my GUI, each pneumatic actuator can be adjusted and inflated on its own. Now, we are trying to recreate the microcontroller system so that it can have individual pressure sensors, which allows for individual actuator testing.

I developed this React JS GUI and connected the device via Bluetooth. Then, I worked with the Arduino code and C++ to connect the back end.

In terms of the design, I wanted to create a sleek platform where it's intuitive in terms of what to do step-by-step, as well as provide options to manipulate actuators on a more visual interface via the new drag-and-drop feature. This system takes in 255kPa max.