Enabling an underwater robot to move like a fish will help it manage canals and waterways.
Faculty Mentor: Daniel Aukes
Letting Robots Glide Instead of Falling
Developing cheap, foldable gliding robots can aid search and rescue operations, increase access to hands-on robotics education.
Cutting tool for Bio-Inspired robotic fish
Designing an autonomous robotic fish to cut vegetation in Phoenix waterways will result in cleaner water and less flooding.
Automated Process Planning for Multi-material Manufacturing
Developing a tool for simple, low-cost robot creation can make STEM education materials more accessible.
Low Cost Sensing
Sensing forces in robotic grippers can be costly and complicated. This project investigates modifying flex sensors at a lower cost. The deflection of links in a robotic gripper can be used to sense the location, magnitude and number of contact forces by matching the link curvature of existing beam models. This concept is embodied using
Developing an Educational Robotic Platform
The goal of the proposed research project is to demonstrate that a robot can be designed, built by and used for undergraduate and high school students as an educational tool. Dr. Aukes’ IDEALab utilizes laminate construction to build foldable robots from cheap materials, allowing robots to be constructed from scratch in a matter of hours
