Beginnings
In 2019 and during a workshop in the Fab15 Conference in Egypt, I learned about inflatables & soft robotics for the first time. The workshop was hosted by Adriana Cabrera and Montse Cigas. What I learned there was fascinating, but I never had the time to revisit those techniques. Luckily, a local FabLab hosted Adriana, and I got the chance to explore more possibilities of soft robotics. I created 3 pieces, where 2 were digitally made using a vinyl cutter and a laser machine, while the 3rd piece was made manually. All pieces eventually used a heat press machine.
Stanford’s ME303: Soft Materials & Soft Composites
In fall 2022, I enrolled in Prof. Renee Zhao’s ME303 class. During this time, my partner and I further explored soft robotics, especially wearables, while focusing on Heat Transfer Vinyl as the medium material.
My role on this project was leading the physical prototyping and fabrication of the robot, while supporting my partner’s work in simulating the robot to predict its behavior using ABAQUS, and running material characterising tests on HTV samples using tensile testing for Stress-Strain curve and cyclic testing.
