00702

7 ms·

1.
by 00702 2y ago
Thank you!
2.
by 00702 2y ago
No I actually didn't have muscle fibers in mind -- there's quite a bit of ongoing research specifically in that area.
3.
by 00702 2y ago
Yes! The catch is any notch you make will weaken the material significantly and you'll have fatigue failures. That's the sneaky part of using a flexible sleeve, you don't introduce any undesired weaknesses.
4.
by 00702 2y ago
Thanks!
5.
by 00702 2y ago
I did experiment with various ways of allowing light to escape but nothing came close to the properties of a total air gap. You can actually measure (relative) bend angle with it like a protractor since the attenuation is very linear! There
6.
by 00702 2y ago
I didn't include this in my article but I did some experiments early on (for a different idea) with air bubbles in oil inside a Teflon coated tube but that presented a lot of challenges (mainly the bubble breaking up) that made it not
7.
by 00702 2y ago
I used it more for future-proofing in case I wanted to do sensor fusion or something like that later on -- currently it's just 1D filtering so I could have used anything. Also I'm just way more familiar with using Kalman filters s
8.
by 00702 2y ago
Since the sleeve is a stretchy rubber as long as the inner diameter of it is a bit smaller than the outer diameter of the fiber it holds just fine. For more dynamic applications, though, a silicone adhesive, or even super glue for more perm
9.
by 00702 2y ago
There are a lot of cool applications indeed! I was able to use it to do gait for a soft robot "leg", but I have to wait for the paper to be published later this year before going into too much detail.
10.
by 00702 2y ago
There are a lot of similarities in the approach to the linked paper (which is a very cool concept) and I saw a lot of similar concepts in my lit review. At a high level, my sensor targets bend localization with simple fabrication techniques
11.
by 00702 2y ago
Great ideas! Even though I haven't implemented it fully it is possible to sense multiple bends because each bend will always have the same relative attenuation (across the strands) so it would just be a matter of matching on the relati
12.
by 00702 2y ago
I explored FBG sensors early on and they are very cool -- I was aiming for a less expensive and more robotics-oriented application. Something that can be seamlessly integrated into a design at a lower level without the complexity of FBG tec
13.
by 00702 2y ago
Fixed -- thanks! And yes exactly! I had access to basically any piece of equipment I could want (including a cleanroom that can create ICs) but then basically no one would be able to recreate what I would make.
14.
by 00702 2y ago
Thanks!
15.
by 00702 2y ago
The short answer? Weekly meetings with my advisor! Long answer: I also had 2 years of classes but I started working on my research immediately, while taking classes. By the time I finished all my classes and became a candidate I had one pap
16.
by 00702 2y ago
I was aiming for significant attenuation when bending, so scratching wouldn't be enough.
17.
by 00702 2y ago
Thank you!
18.
by 00702 2y ago
3D printing does affect the light passing through significantly. There are a number of options for fabricating these but most of the successful ones involve cutting (can even use a laser cutter).
19.
by 00702 2y ago
The finger bending example is certainly a classic for something like this but I think it truly shines in soft robot examples like flapping wing robots or swimming finned robot, where it's critical for sensors to be mechanically transpa
20.
by 00702 2y ago
Haha this made me laugh -- thanks!
21.
by 00702 2y ago
Oh yeah cable companies have long been able to do that - I wasn't trying to compete with or replace that technology. My work was soft robotics-focused with simplicity in mind.
22.
by 00702 2y ago
Indeed! How do you know her?
23.
by 00702 2y ago
Yeah initially doing literature review was a bit daunting because of all this existing work, especially FBG-type sensors, but this idea is so fundamentally simple that its been mostly bypassed by the smarter minds
24.
by 00702 2y ago
Thanks -- I definitely relied heavily on my wife in order to maintain that pace.
25.
by 00702 2y ago
Thanks!
26.
by 00702 2y ago
My (former) school is actually already in the process of doing that! My dissertation committee thought it was novel enough that it needed some IP protection and encouraged me to pursue that.
27.
by 00702 2y ago
Very much so!
28.
by 00702 2y ago
It doesn't! I heavily used TPU to drive home the point that it can work with almost any light-transmitting fiber. I used PMMA optical fiber for the more fine demos.
29.
by 00702 2y ago
Good point -- I need to better explain what "bend localization" means on a more practical level pretty early on.
30.
Show HN: I made a new sensor out of 3D printer filament for my PhD(paulbupejr.com)
886 points by 00702 2y ago|130 comments

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