Skills
- SolidWorks (mechanical CAD)
- MATLAB & Simulink (dynamic system modelling)
- MATLAB App Designer (GUI development)
- Mechanism design (distributed revolute joints)
- Soft-rigid hybrid robotics
Goal
Design a hybrid soft-rigid vine robot that combines the length-growth capability of soft vine robots with the shape control of rigid manipulators. The core idea: distributed internal revolute joints along the body that enable shape control without restricting the vine’s ability to extend in length through eversion — a trade-off conventional vine robots can’t usually resolve.
Why this matters?
Vine robots excel in confined, unstructured environments — search and rescue, minimally invasive medical access, pipe inspection — but their shape is largely dictated by what they push against. Distributed internal joints decouple shape from environment without sacrificing the vine’s defining growth behaviour.
What I did
- Mechanical design and CAD in Fusion 360, integrating multiple internal revolute joints along the vine body for distributed actuation while preserving the eversion mechanism.
- Dynamic system modelling in MATLAB and Simulink to simulate actuation behaviour and validate that the joint configuration could produce stable, controllable shape change during growth.
- A custom MATLAB App Designer user interface (pictured above) for visualising control inputs and real-time body configuration, enabling rapid iteration on joint placement and actuator parameters.