August 11, 2015

Actuating Morphing Linkages

August 11, 2015/by Prof. McCarthy

Target Profiles for Morphing Linkage

Lawrence Funke and Prof. James Schmiedeler of the University of Notre Dame Locomotion and Biomechanics Lab show that the movement of a morphing linkage through its target profiles can be improved by coordinating actuation of the sub-chains. This was presented at the Mechanisms and Robotics Conference which was part of the 2015 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, August 2-5, in Boston, MA. The video below shows the improvement obtained by moving from 1 to 3 coordinated actuators.

Rolling Robot at SUTD

August 11, 2015/by Prof. McCarthy

A research team including Profs. GimSong Soh, Kristin Wood and Kevin Otto at Robotics Innovation Lab at the Singapore University of Technology and Design has developed a rolling robot about the size of a baseball. The design and motion planning of this robot, Virgo 2.0, was presented at the Mechanisms and Robotics Conference which was part of the 2015 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, August 2-5, in Boston, MA. A demonstration of the Virgo 2.0 moving through a figure eight path around obstacles is shown in the video below.