16-375 Robotics for Creative Practice (F15) Final Projects

I created a CNC weaving robot. Essentially, it is a robotic attachment for the CNC router that, when activated by a push button, passes a spool of thread across a gap around a thread. For the project, the router bed was fitted with a thread grid that the robot maneuvered around. And over the course of the demonstration, a pattern emerged.

This project is an exploration of how the concept of personal space can exist outside the realm of the person and more specifically exist within physical objects.

We created a set of robotic racers based on the mechanism of pop-up books. These robots are low cost, easy to mass produce, and act as the corner stone in our ongoing exploration into pop-up robotics. To culminate this leg of our research we organised an underground robot racing competition.

This robot was all about creating a learning-by-doing environment between the robot and the user. The intention was to create a robot that responded to a user's actions with some of it's own. Over the course of a few minute experience, the user could gain an understanding of how to control the robot using his or her actions. Alternatively, given the amount of variation in potential responses, the user may find themselves trying to teach the robot how they want it to respond.