Daniel Campos Zamora

Soft Pneumatic Interfaces

A pipeline to design and fabricate soft sensors for safer human-machine interactions

Two part image showing a 3d render of the compliant Z-Axis mechanism using springds and on the right, a modified ball-transfer heating element.
Animation showing a person squeeze an airbubble that is mounted onto the robot arm.
Animation of the fabrication process showing a heated ball transfer roll over two plastic sheets and weld them together.
Animation showing an air bubble inflate and curl up.
3D rendering of the fabrication machine made of extruded aluminum brackets and a metallic table surface.
Photograph showing a black robot arm mounted on a stand. The "forearm" of the arm is covered with an air bubble. A person's hand holds an unfolded air bubble to expose the upper arm of the robot.
Image showing a hand squeeze the "forearm" of a robot arm that has been equipped with an airbubble.
GIF showing a person attach the air bubble using velcro and press on it.
Year
2019
Type
Research
Collaborators
Disney Research
Venue
IEEE RoboSoft 2019
Links

We created a design and fabrication process for soft sensors that enables more engaging physical, embodied interactions with technology. This platform makes resilient air bubbles that can be used as sensors to detect a persons touch. We can outfit robots with them to make them safer to interact and collaborate with people, or add them to existing hardware to allow for new ways of playing with a device.

The software takes in black and white line drawings then breaks down the design into tool paths for the custom heating element to trace onto polyurethane sheets. We altered a soldering iron so that it can be outfitted with ball transfer that heats up, presses down onto the sheets of polyurethane and smoothly rolls over. The heat fuses the layers of polyurethane to create an air-tight seal. We made custom valves that provide an airtight seal and can connect to a pressure sensor to measure the internal pressure of the bubble. One of the applications we explored was using these bubbles on a robot to detect physical interaction with a person.

This work was presented at the Robosoft 2019 Conference in Korea.