12/20/2023 ## Final Project: Organic Movements One of my favorite places on Earth are the reefs of the red sea. You dive underwater and submerge into a world of silence, vibrant colors and soft rythm of water creatures. You can get a feeling for my favorite place here: I wish I could not only see a static image of the reefs but a moving world similar to the magic portrait in harry potter but in 3D. So, I began exploring Fab ways that allowed for nudibranch, sea star, fish, moraine, jelly fish, coral like locomotion and movements. I really enjoyed the movement that soft actuators such as artificial muscles make. The non-linear acceleration of LCE injects a feeling of its alive! into an inanimate material. Furthermore, the LCE does not require a loud pump or motor but heat or light. Heat can be produced through electrical current. Moreover, LCE fibers has a high, reversible contraction rate of over 40% making it ideal for visual shape shifting. With this in mind, I started exploring different mechanisms that mimics sea creatures' soft movements and aquatic locomotion. 1) Bending motion Scallop moving | Mimic :-------------------------:|:-------------------------:  | This attempt was to study a opening and closing mechanism. It works very well with kirigami where cuts in a plane allows for 3D structure when actuated. 2) Spring mechanism Mushroom Coral moving | Mimic :-------------------------:|:-------------------------: | To ensure the LCE always returns to the same position, I wondered if a Kirigami structure that acts as a spring can help. The kirigami cuts can be embedded into the material itsself and does not require additional energy nor mechanical parts. 3) Crawling locomotion Nudibranch moving | Mimic :-------------------------:|:-------------------------:  | Based on this [paper](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf8014), I looked at how through two termal pads, I can control the bending radius of the base material and make it move like a nudibranch. 4) Pulling and Pushing Star fish moving | Mimic :-------------------------:|:-------------------------: | At last I settled on this structure to package it. # What does it do? It moves! like sea creatures. The actuation is happening with non moving parts. It uses Laser induced graphene as a thermal heater to actuate liquid crystal elastopher that has been printed on top of the graphene layer.     # Who's done what beforehand? Researchers have worked on electrothermally actuated soft robots. The closest paper I found was the combination of either LIG and PDMS or LCE with another type of heater. The combination of LCE on top of LIG is a novel area that has yet to be developed. # What did you design? - I designed the mechanism to make most use of the characteristics of LCE. - I made shape of the polyamide that acts like a "exoskeleton" using Rhino and then cut it out with a Cricut vinyl cutter. - I designed the shape and position of the graphene pad so that it achieves the desired resistance of around 0.2 amps at 12v or 5v. Anything above it easily led to sparks on the graphene and anything below was not enough to achieve the ~80 celcius that LCE requires to actuate. - I designed the print path for LCE. I wrote a GH script that can turn any geometry into machinable gcode. The alignment direction of the LCE through printing defines the way it actuates. e.g. if you would print a concentric circle, when actuated the center of the circle would rise up, whereas if you print a rectangle along its longer edge, the LCE would pull the shorter edges towards the middle. - I designed and 3D printed a frame to hold the components together and leave room for pcb board. - I milled pcb boards to control the actuation through current and made it controllabe wirelessly.    # What materials and components were used? - LIG, LCE, Polyamide, PLA   # Where did they come from? - LIG was induced on the GCC CO2 lasercutter - Polyamde was bought from McMaster in different thicknesses 50, 70, 100, 125um. - LCE was synthesised in the Wetlab at Media Lab - PLA was bought # How much did they cost? I listed the costs next to each component. In total it costs around 8$ to produce one.  # What parts and systems were made? All parts and systems were made, except for the Polyamide, the screws and PLA. With amazing help of the TAs Wedyan and Ozgun! # What processes were used? I used the lasercutter to induce graphene, 3D printing on a custom 3D printer to print and align LCE and a Prusa to print the casing. I tried plating the graphene on top of the polyamide with a copper frame so the electrically induced heat can be more evenly distributed and heat up the LCE more effectively. However, that needs some fine tuning. A thin layer of copper tends to oxidize fast but a thicker layer makes the structure rigid. Here is a video summarising the workflow. # What questions were answered? Is it possible to mimick the movement of a scallop, nudibranch, coral and a star fish using Fab production methods and materials? ======= Am still working on the finishing the packaging! Will be updated by Friday! One of my favorite places on Earth are the reefs of the red sea. You dive underwater and submerge into a world of silence, vibrant colors and soft rythm of water creatures. You can get a feeling for my favorite place here: I wish I could not only see a static image of the reefs but a moving world similar to the magic portrait in harry potter but in 3D. So, I began exploring Fab ways that allowed for nudibranch, sea star, fish, moraine, jelly fish, coral like locomotion and movements. I really enjoyed the movement that soft actuators such as artificial muscles make. The non-linear acceleration of LCE injects a feeling of its alive! into an inanimate material. Furthermore, the LCE does not require a loud pump or motor but heat or light. Heat can be produced through electrical current. Moreover, LCE fibers has a high, reversible contraction rate of over 40% making it ideal for visual shape shifting. With this in mind, I started exploring different mechanisms that mimics sea creatures' soft movements and aquatic locomotion. 1) Bending motion Scallop moving | Mimic :-------------------------:|:-------------------------:  | This attempt was to study a opening and closing mechanism. It works very well with kirigami where cuts in a plane allows for 3D structure when actuated. 2) Spring mechanism Mushroom Coral moving | Mimic :-------------------------:|:-------------------------: | To ensure the LCE always returns to the same position, I wondered if a Kirigami structure that acts as a spring can help. The kirigami cuts can be embedded into the material itsself and does not require additional energy nor mechanical parts. 3) Crawling locomotion Nudibranch moving | Mimic :-------------------------:|:-------------------------:  | Based on this [paper](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf8014), I looked at how through two termal pads, I can control the bending radius of the base material and make it move like a nudibranch. 4) Pulling and Pushing Star fish moving | Mimic :-------------------------:|:-------------------------: | At last I settled on this structure to package it. # What does it do? It moves! like sea creatures. The actuation is happening with non moving parts. It uses Laser induced graphene as a thermal heater to actuate liquid crystal elastopher that has been printed on top of the graphene layer. # Who's done what beforehand? Researchers have worked on electrothermally actuated soft robots. The closest paper I found was the combination of either LIG and PDMS or LCE with another type of heater. The combination of LCE on top of LIG is a novel area that has yet to be developed. # What did you design? - I designed the mechanism to make most use of the characteristics of LCE. - I made shape of the polyamide that acts like a "exoskeleton" using Rhino and then cut it out with a Cricut vinyl cutter. - I designed the shape and position of the graphene pad so that it achieves the desired resistance of around 0.2 amps at 12v or 5v. Anything above it easily led to sparks on the graphene and anything below was not enough to achieve the ~80 celcius that LCE requires to actuate. - I designed the print path for LCE. I wrote a GH script that can turn any geometry into machinable gcode. The alignment direction of the LCE through printing defines the way it actuates. e.g. if you would print a concentric circle, when actuated the center of the circle would rise up, whereas if you print a rectangle along its longer edge, the LCE would pull the shorter edges towards the middle. - I designed and 3D printed a frame to hold the components together and leave room for pcb board. - I milled pcb boards to control the actuation through current and made it controllabe wirelessly. # What materials and components were used? - LIG, LCE, Polyamide, PLA # Where did they come from? - LIG was induced on the GCC CO2 lasercutter - Polyamde was bought from McMaster in different thicknesses 50, 70, 100, 125um. - LCE was synthesised in the Wetlab at Media Lab - PLA was bought # How much did they cost? I listed the costs next to each component. In total it costs around 8$ to produce one.  # What parts and systems were made? All parts and systems were made, except for the Polyamide, the screws and PLA. With amazing help of the TAs Wedyan and Ozgun! # What processes were used? I used the lasercutter to induce graphene, 3D printing on a custom 3D printer to print and align LCE and a Prusa to print the casing. I tried plating the graphene on top of the polyamide with a copper frame so the electrically induced heat can be more evenly distributed and heat up the LCE more effectively. However, that needs some fine tuning. A thin layer of copper tends to oxidize fast but a thicker layer makes the structure rigid. Here is a video summarising the workflow. # What questions were answered? Is it possible to mimick the movement of a scallop, nudibranch, coral and a star fish using Fab production methods and materials? # What worked? What didn't? The acutation with a heat gun works very well. The actuation with current works well on a large area of LIG but not as well when the LCE is not contacting the he`ating element. This could be further explored e.g. transfering graphene to LCE # How was it evaluated? Did it move without motor and pump? yes 🐠 # What are the implications? Since it mimicks the movement of organic creatures well, it could be used as human - nature interaction material. One example could be a plant sensor that tells the plant owner if the plant receives enough sunlight. The sensor could be in the shape of a leave and when sun heats up the LIG, LCE would open up the fake leave slowly. This interface amplifies the natural movement of the plant and makes process visible to the human eye.