Robotic art

Collaboration with Tehran Urban Innovation Center

This video below is an outcome of a design research studio called, smart seat defined and developed in a collaboration between TUIC and our UCL Soft Haptics and Robotics Lab at UCL Mechanical Engineerg.

 

Collaboration with the Bartlett School of Architecture

In collaboration with Ruairi Glynn, Director of the Interactive Architecture Lab of the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, the #SoftHapticsLab organised a workshop on “Soft Architecture Machines”.

 

Maria Paneta and Ava Aghakouchak created a SoftScreen – a wearable device through which soft robotics in technologies is explored. It consists of six channels, each one of these work independently and are controlled through a series of switches and pipes so as to provide tactile feedback to the user.

A series of technical experiments and a speculative film: An experimental prosthesis was designed to study whether a person’s awareness of space could be amplified using live 3D scanning technologies controlling the inflation and deflation of our soft robotic wearable. Results were successful and suggested possible applications for people with visual impairments. It also revealed the possibility of constructing virtual spaces within physical space that could be sensed through it.

Juncheng Chen, Siyuan Jing and Lydia Zhou started a project exploring innovative mobile structures by investigating various strategies for locomotion. Inspired by Theo Jansen’s mechanism designed for walking movements, the approach of Golem is to design a lightweight, low-cost and sustainable mobile structure, using air as the main energy input. We developed an soft air muscle actuator to generate movements of the robot, experimented with different designs from tensegrity structure to biomorphic mechanism, the aim of the project is to create a modular system which is flexible to satisfy changing spatial requirements.