どんなワークショップ？

Ten people were joining the workshop. In the beginning, we had a quick introduction about what a soft robot is and why we want to make them. Then we talked about caterpillars and its unique locomotion gaits. In the second part, the attendees were grouped into three groups of 3 – 4 members. Each group had an expert in fabrication and robotics. We learned how to use silver nano-particle ink to print bending sensor for the robots, how to use shape memory alloys (SMA) to actuate the robots, and how to put them together to have a crawling paper caterpillar robot. The making of actuators with  SMA was harder than expected as it required skill in working with tiny and delicate components. At the end of the making session, all of the groups managed to work with SMA and the Arduino board to make the robot run and to show the bending angle from the bending sensor on a computer display. One group managed to make two paper caterpillar robots with different size of the body to see how it affects the locomotion. Another group tried to improve the gripping leg origami structure to increase the crawling speed.