Mechanical design of a quadruped robot

Thesis: S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2015.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (page 49).This thesis presents the mechanical design and fabrication of the Super Mini Cheetah (SMC) robot, a small ( 9kg) quadruped that is capable of jumping, bounding and trotting. The robot is designed using commercially available components and rapid prototyping methods, resulting in a low-cost, replicable and modifiable platform capable of force, position, or impedance control of each limb. The mechanical system consists of an aluminum torso frame and 3D printed legs. The design of the legs is based on kinematic calculations which determined the lengths of the linkages, force generating capability and the available workspace. The detailed design of the leg components was determined by estimating of the loading conditions required for dynamic locomotion. The design of the mechanical system was refined using FEA and bench level calculations. This thesis documents drop tests and hopping experiments that were performed with the first quadruped prototype.by Deborah Ajilo.S.B

Tool Condition Monitoring for a desktop CNC milling machine

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2018.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 81-84).Tool wear is a major obstacle to realizing full automation in metal cutting operations. In this thesis, we designed and implemented a low cost Tool Condition Monitoring (TCM) system using off-the-shelf sensors and data acquisition methods . Peripheral end milling tests were done on a low carbon steel workpiece and the spindle vibration, cutting zone temperature and spindle motor current were recorded. Features from these data sources were used to train decision tree models in MATLAB with the aim of classifying the stages of tool wear. Results showed that the feature sets fusing information from all data sources performed the best, classifying the tool wear stage with up to 93% average accuracy.by Deborah Ajilo.S.M

Miniature On-Body Robots as Mobile Wearables

We introduce Rovables, a miniature robot that can move freely on unmodified clothing. The robots are held in place by magnetic wheels, and can climb vertically. The robots are untethered and have an onboard battery, microcontroller, and wireless communications. They also contain a low-power localization system that uses wheel encoders and IMU, allowing Rovables to perform limited autonomous navigation on the body. In the technical evaluations, we found that Rovables can operate continuously for 45 minutes and can carry up to 1.5N. We propose an interaction space for mobile on-body devices spanning sensing, actuation, and interfaces, and develop application scenarios in that space. Our applications include on-body sensing, modular displays, tactile feedback and interactive clothing and jewelry

A Distributed Robot Garden System

Computational thinking is an important part of a modern education, and robotics provides a powerful tool for teaching programming logic in an interactive and engaging way. The robot garden presented in this paper is a distributed multi-robot system capable of running autonomously or under user control from a simple graphical interface. Over 100 origami flowers are actuated with LEDs and printed pouch motors, and are deployed in a modular array around additional swimming and crawling folded robots. The garden integrates state-of-the-art rapid design and fabrication technologies with distributed systems software techniques to create a scalable swarm in which robots can be controlled individually or as a group. The garden can be used to teach basic algorithmic concepts through its distributed algorithm demonstration capabilities and can teach programming concepts through its education-oriented user interface.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (grant 1240383)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (grant 1138967)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship (1122374