Carmel Majidi has a long term vision of human and robot interaction. His work focuses on building soft robots that will replace the large heavy industrial robots for home and personal use.
Carmel Majidi: Soft robots from PopTech on Vimeo.
In his PopTech talk Soft Robots Majidi discusses some of the ideas that led him to his current work and future considerations for co-robotics. He begins with the differences in rigidity between soft humans and rigid robotics. A biomechanic, Carmel says, would call this impedence-mismatch.
Harvard's soft robot is shown and discussed as a robot powered by air inflation. One concern about this type of robot is the equipment required to run the device. Pumps, hardware, electronics, and compressors all need to work together to make the robot wiggle.
Carmel's work is heading toward using robots filled with conductive fluid instead of compressed air. The benefit is that the robot can then act as a circuit and remain electrically functional when stretched or acted on by outside forces.
Artificial muscles are the next piece of the robotics puzzle. Circuits that bend will make it easier for soft robots to function. This will mimic natural muscles that are soft at rest and harder when flexed.
The last idea is that modeling and design is important for soft robot mobility. The soft quadraped robot moved differently based on the surface it walked upon - felt vs gelatin vs hard plastic surfaces all produced a different movement in the robot. Movement properties can be predicted and tuned using engineering theory.
Majidi gives a great talk that gives a good mix of big ideas and detail. As part of Carnegie Mellon's Soft Machine Lab he works on projects that integrate geometry, materials and control. His takeaway thought is that soft robotics will require the work of engineers, scientists and designers to move forward.