Foldable Robotics at Escuela Verde

This week I have been fortunate to be able to visit Escuela Verde (the Green School) in Vieques, PR. They are beginning their 6-week quest on the topic of Physics, and I get to visit two days this week to talk about robotics and help them use their arts and craft skills towards learning physics basics. On Tuesday I stopped by for my first day. The format is challenging, because we have a wide range of learners, from 4 all the way to 15. Here's what we talked about on Tuesday:

Session 1 (35-40 minutes):

I sat with the kids and walked them through some videos I have collected, of my work and the work of others. We talked about:

• My Robots: Some examples, why do I make soft, easy to make robots? How I use physics and simulation to make my robots better. Common questions:
  • Did I actually make them?
  • Who made the robots?
  • Am I a scientist? What's engineering? Whats the difference?
  • Are these robots kind of like Lego robots?
  • Is it fun to make robots?
  • Do you know all the people in my photos and videos?
• Bio-Inspired Robots: robots inspired by birds, cockroaches, fish, geckos, etc. Kids are so lucky these days, they have so many sources of inspiration in the biological AND engineered world!
  • What is bioinspiration?
• Product Packaging: People make some extraordinary boxes for packaging, display, shipping, and material savings.
• Deployable Structures: Linkages and morphing/transformation feature prominently in architectural innovations too -- we talked buildings, architecture, and dynamic sculptures like "Strandbeest".
• Tensegrity Systems: Another, very similar paradigm with different rules, but techniques we can draw from.
• Origami: Typically we think of origami as folding to make a shape, but I showed a lot of origami-inspired devices that move or "deploy",
• Pop-up Books: Pop-up books blend the right amount of art and engineering together to get the point across -- you can use paper to make engineered motion!

Session 2: 45-60 minutes

Materials:

• Cardstock
• Scissors
• Staplers
• String
• Markers / Pencils
• Straws

We walked through some basic elements of mechanisms, making them along the way:

• What are the basic parts of a mechanism? (links and joints)
• What are serial mechanisms? How do you make them?
• What are parallel mechanisms? How to make a four-bar mechanism.
• What are planar mechanisms
• How many ways can joints move? What about in the human body:
  • Elbow
  • Wrist
  • Ankle
  • Knee
  • Hip -- ball and socket / spherical joint
• What are Degrees of Freedom
• How many degrees of freedom are there with objects in the world? (6) How do you count them?
• Can you make a hip joint just with folding? (Yes!)
• How do you store energy?
  • gravity
  • springs / rubber-bands
• How do you use rubber bands to store energy in a mechanism
• What are tendons? Where are the muscles for your hand actually located? How is that muscle force transmitted out to your fingers?
• How do you use string like a tendon in a mechanism? Can you route string with other materials like through a straw? Why would you want to?
• What's the difference between strong and stiff?
• What's an I-beam? how is a corrugated roof better than a flat roof?
• How do you make links stronger? (geometry) What are some easy shapes?
• How to make your first popup-book
• How to add legs

Sessions 3 and 4 on Thursday, so I'll let you know what we did after that! Thank-you to Jennifer Smith for the invitation.