Human Muscle interpretation in robotic arm mechanism.

Motorized device has a limited mimicry on human/animal muscle movement. Being precise to satisfy industrial demands has allowed robots to replace human labor.

However, it lost a sense of human mimicry in natural movement. Just like musicians avoid exact tempo of the instruments at the MIDI software to make more humane sound,  the movement of the robot hand mocks the human natural motion.

Implementing humanness on the robotic hand is based on the long time ago animal experiment. From this well known experiment on the dead body of the frog,  we can see animal muscle is triggered by electrons.

Making frogs’ leg muscle popping by connecting electricity clearly shows disgust of the combination of the nature and the artificial implant. However, from the scientific sense of  the experiment, it allowed me to make this human-like robot arm.

Instead of digital input to analog output, here both are analog reading and analog output. Magnet was used to convey natural human instability in human motion. Instability means imperfection which is a contrary to industrial robots with G-code.

As one can see, the servo motor is shaking as the magnetic flux sensor is approaching to the magnet.  Just like when human limbs are responding to the objects ahead of touching them directly.

The exploration of this human mimicry will lower the barrier of the denial against artificial robots.

In terms of an assembly, I made pockets bit smaller which is better than bigger. Getting all 4 pieces into the 4 holes was painful. I sanded them and it was now loose by hair. It was fit but easy to remove too. So I glued the top 4 pockets. Here is the result.

The pieces came out nicely except the black laminated piece was painful to get it out. The laminated was not cut clean I had to cut manually. After Cutting manually, I sanded the edges which torn off some of the laminates. So the parts which got torn off are placed at the inside of the table.

At the master cam, I made three different G code because I had three different pieces of woods. Having multiple woods created multiple G codes. However at the CNC, it was much easier because I basically set the woods all together at the bed of the CNC. As CNC finishes one job, I switched the XYZ zeros to the new board and started cutting with the different files.

Here you may see the black wood is aligned next to the second piece.

I grabbed the material that is thick. I looked for the thickness first which later gave me a hard time.

Since the thickness of the aluminum rod was too thick, I changed the teeth of the lathe to the other form. Getting them back in the right position was hard that one at the bottom was loose due to the gravity. So, I tightened them with my hand as screwing the chuck key. And in order to check the safety I tightened them to the maximum.

After the teeth were fit, I placed the rod and started facing. Since the rod was cut not in flat I faced it. It took a lot of oiling, stop and check.

As I face the surface I noticed that the rod was not cutting flat on the outer edge. So I faced from the inside to the outside instead of from the outside to the inside. And the result was good.   

After the facing, I did turning and marked the line that I could turn as I am turning to keep myself safe.

After turning, I marked the design that I wanted to make and I used parting tool and turing tool to making it. After finishing the turning, I drilled the hole at the center. First I used the center bit to mark the center. I used 4 drill bits to get the right size from the chart.

After threading, I wanted to cut the piece into half. I used parting tool to cut then, at the middle of process I was little scared. The piece that I was about to cut was heavy and I was not confident whether the WD40 plastic pipe would catch it. So, I stopped the lathe and cut the other end with the metal saw. The piece was too small to fit in the metal saw. So I tried to cut just 1/4 of the piece. And as I finished cutting, the other piece flew to the plastic container. That was really a scary moment. So later, I would just use the lathe facing the piece to shorten it. So I finished the piece and made the thread with tapping tool.

After finishing, I found that I actually made a hole through as I am making the tap. Here is the result.

After that, I managed the process at the Mastercam. At the Autocad I used different colors to manage the pocketing and the contouring and I noticed the yellow is not readable at the Mastercam because selection made in the Mastercam is yellow.

After generating the G-code, I brought the file into the CNC and it was cutting well.

Conclusion. I noticed that in terms of height, there is a lot of difference between the number that I plugged in with the actual size because the pocketing was a cutting, basically tearing off the board a lot.

From the measurements, I made a square 48 inch by 24 inch and squished the design into this square. As I am working on the Vectorworks I found difficulty getting used to the joining lines. So, I re-sketched on the AutoCAD which I am comfortable with. After making the DWG/DXF file, I re-opened the file in the Vectorworks to make sure. At the MasterCam I managed to make a nice file and generated G-code.

 I set the board on the bed, loaded milling bit and from the CNC interface software I zeroed XYZ axes. After that, I clicked the preview and the preprocess and started.

Surprisingly, at the beginning when the machine was checking its movement it was trying to go to the end of Y axis. I stopped and looked back the file again at the MasterCam and the Vectorworks. I tried one more and it still did that strange movement. So, I looked carefully and found at the preview that the origin was far off. So the machine wanted to go to the far outside of the bed.

I opened the file again at the Vectorworks and I found the origin of XY was not at the center of the workpage by drawing a line with the staring point (0,0). It was at the left bottom corner. So, I moved drawings close to the origin and regenerated the G-code. And It was not cutting again. The bit was in the air. So, I quickly caught that I did put the positive number at the Cut Depth. So, I revisit the CamMaster and changed the number with the negative number and regenerated the G-code. Now it was cutting well. As it is cutting I vacuumed the debris.

During the cutting when the bit enters the press-fit area it made a loud noise. I paused the CNC and examined it. Since the press-fit area was too tiny the wood was cracked in the middle of the layer and it was shaking. So, I broke it away from the bit and continued the work. So, for the second round when it was almost done, I paused the machine and removed the piece beore it gets creacked. You can see them here. I sanded the final pieces and assembled them together.

Finished.

It was presented at the NYU Winter Show 2015. 

A. CONCEPT
The concept never got into my mind until starring at the fan and the midterm together when I was at the floor. First I thought of using a sewing machine but I could not handle and elaborate the mechanisms of the sewing machine to the art. I did not know what to do but the fan and the midterm just got my vision and the concept came like “bam!” After that, I sketched the concept.

B. INTENTION
My intention was making something whimsical. I believe in the whimsicalness and the randomness of the art. Since the wind is a whimsical medium, it was all set.

C. WORK

1. I placed the fan inside of the box and I found I would need some holes at the bottom of the box. I made 4 holes and I used the cut pieces as the feet of the box which can allow wind to flow.

2. I measured the height of the fan and made the top half of the box. Also I made the top cover of the box.

3. I planned to use the accelerometer but not so sure about what to put at the hole to dance around.However, I remembered the pingpong ball from Xiaolong Mu’s desk. So, I got one from him and made a hole and inserted the accelerometer inside.

4. In terms of Input, I wanted to use the pedal from the sewing machine so I checked the serial reading. The values were from 0 to 300. So, I used the if statement greater than 100. However, the pedal has a long electrical wire which seems not so responsive with low voltage.

5. Since the output is 110V AC fan, I used a 2channel relay to control them. I connected it with the multi tab power outlet. After a user testing, I found that the user does not get what is happening because the fan needs some time to accelerate to make some sound. So, I plugged in the 110V bulb to the multi tab power outlet. I wanted people to know that something is on by the light.
6. I decorated the top of the box. I thought of keeping the surface clean as a Scandinavian design. HJowever, after the in-class advise, I showed my work to family group chat and they said I need to do something like painting. So, I thought of using some permanent color markers but as I looked around the Blick, I found a copper sheets and I decided to use them. I bent them with the bending machine at the shop to look cool and make stiff so if the pingpong ball hits them, the sound comes.

D. COMPLETION

E. CONCLUSION
I thought of the first class of the physical computing. I remember digging out the junk shelf making an imaginative camera that captures the materials of the room. Acrylic piece was the spectrometer and there was acrylic tube as a 360 lens. Now, I am still digging out the junk shelf. I got the fan from Joe Mango, I got the sewing machine pedal from the soft lab. They were all found at the junk shelf. However, now I used them and it functions.

RHYTHM & WATER

A. IDEATION
I and Michelle Hessel wanted to do something with water. So, we thought of using water, a container and sound. As we improve our idea, we concluded to use the water as the instrument. So we named it R&W(Rhythm & Water) like R&B(Rhythm & Blues).

B. EXECUTION
1. First, we started small. We used a recycle cup to test our hypothesis. We just used a simple one note. The result? It was not working. Water was not conductive enough to low voltage. So, we added some salt to make it more conductive. And it was successful.

2. Now we wanted big and more note. Michelle nicely brought her bowl and we tested on the bowl with multiple notes and multiple copper tapes. It was successful. Once the circuit was done, we moved on to the fabrication.

3. So, We needed an enclosure that houses Arduino and the bowl. I used the Intro to Fabrication experiences to make the enclosure. I used the machine saw, router, drill, etc.

4. As the enclosure was done, we combined them all and used the battery to make it working. Once it was working, we added LED lights, a name plate. Also Michelle improved the codes to adjust to the optimal tone and brought in a sense of design on the copper tape.

C. COMPLETION

HOW IT’S MADE >>

TASK : Fabricate something using primarily two different materials.  The materials cannot be acrylic or plywood (unless you are gluing up your own plywood).

1. Inspiration
I wanted to make a nice slick look lamp for my room. Why? I had a $ 8.00 work light from the Home Depot and the bulb just died. So, I wanted to make a nice LED light. So I visited the lighting plus and purchased $5.99 15inch LED strip. After that, I started sketching the design.

2. PLAN
[HOME DEPOT] I fell in love with searching the home depot website. I searched the materials and listed up what I would need. As always, the lamp was targeted to the low cost with the WOW effect.

3. Execution
A. [DAY1/ Shopping] I went to the home depot for two major products. One is the 18 inch metal cabinet pull and the other was the wood. Unlike the website they only had the expensive hand pull which was $24.00. So I decided to go for a cheap and short hand pull and extend it by the copper pipe. The fun part was as I face the changes in the materials, I had to re-think the design. So I searched around the home depot and changed my design. Home depot had a cutting service. So I asked them to cut the copper pipe into 17 inch which was also whimsically decided. So, I looked around and purchased nice parts. I decided to use cheap 2″X6″X 8 feet lumber and I found nice 1-3/4 X 36″ dowel which had a nice natural pattern. As the dowel is long, I had to figure out the wiring. I did not want to drill the whole long path. So I thought of using the cable ties and the colored were cheaper. So I got them instead of black ones (which I regret later cuz the black is better in terms of the LΘΘK). Here is the list of what I purchased:
– HOME DEPOT
($ 8.97) 1-3/4″X36″ Square Dowel
($ 4.76) 1/2″ X 2′ Type M Copper
($ 4.50) Colored Ties
($ 5.97) 3″ Pull
($ 4.83) Copper Male Adapter
($ 1.24) Ferrule/Stop
($ 2.61) Spacer
($ 0.60) Wire Rope
($ 1.18) Sheet Metal Screw
($ 1.18) Fender Washer
– Lighting Plus
($ 6.29) LED Strip

TOTAL : $39.03 + $6.29 = $45.59

B. [Duck Tape] I tested my design with the duck tape to see the balance of the light.

C. [Drill, Band Saw, Caliper] I press-fitted the copper pipe and the pipe adapter into the cabinet pull to make it long. After that I measured the depth of the hand pull strut to see how much I can cut the back of the dowel. I cut the back of the dowel with the band saw. I used the caliper to measure the thickness of the pull.

D. [Drill, Level, Jig, machine saw] I drilled the hole with the drill bit. I used the level to level flat before drilling. Later, I found I drilled the dowel too high. I needed to cut it off by the machine saw and drilling process was done again.

E. [Drill, Spade Bit, Washer, Caliper, Level] After drilling, I measured the size of the washer which will prevent the hand pull to come off. Also I measured the necessary depth to the pull with the caliper. I kept the caliper to mark the depth and drilled with the spade bit.

F. [Washer, Duck Tape, Band Saw] I used the washer and the bolt to hold the pull. It worked fine. I covered the back of the dowel with the cut piece and I found I forgot to drill the bolt hole first. So I used the duck tape to hold them together and drilled the hole and widened the entry by the counter sink.  After that I used the band saw to make a path of the cable.

G. [Cable, Stopper, Jig, Hand Saw, Cable Tie] Now, I needed to make a stop to the cable. However, the aluminum stopper was too strong, I was impossible to cramp it with the plier. So I used the jig to cramp it. And I cut the end of the copper pipe with the hand saw. However, next time, I would use the drill to make a hole because the U-cut could not hold the stopper well. Now, I found that the copper pipe is heavy that I would need a counter weight. So I tested to hang some counter weight. I used the stones as the counter weight. I used the cable ties to hold the LED strip.

H. [Solder, Cable tie, Drill] I soldered the LED strip to the adapter which was found at the junk shelf and I implemented the soldered part into the inside of the dowel. So I drilled two holes for the wire. Now I assembled them all.

I. [Re-think] I pictured the final and it was ugly. I did not like the counter weight. As a whole, it ruined the entire look. So I re-think how to modify slick and zen…. ZZZzzzz.

J. [DAY2/ Drill, Spade Bit, Drill Bit, Jig, Stopper] I thought of using the left-over copper pipe as a counter holder. So I marked the position of the counter copper pipe and drilled two holes on the dowel so that the light can tilt to two positions. Also I drilled the hole on the copper pipe to stick in the cable. I cut the previous ferrule of the cable and inserted into the hole of the counter pipe. I used the jig to cramp the stopper again.

K. [Drill, Counter Sink Bit, Glue] Now, I needed the bottom of the lamp. I could make it by cutting the bottom of the dowel but it would make the lamp too short. So, I looked over the junk shelf and used the plywood piece as a bottom. I knew I should’ve not used the plywood but, I had no other option. I glued them first and drilled and used the bolts to hold them together.

4. Completion

DOYOKI.COM>

[IMPROVEMENTS]
I found the black cable ties so I switched the blue to black ones. Also I went to the Metalliferous to buy a sheet of copper. I used it as the base. I drilled and hammered to shape the base.

As a whole the look is improved and more slick and cool.

HOW IT’S MADE >BLOG

TASK : Build an enclosure for an electronics project.

1. Inspiration
I wanted to make an enclosure for the phys-comp. Many ITPers buy the plastic tool boxes to house phys-comp materials like the arduino, the sensors, and the wires, etc. So I wanted to make a wooden box that can house phys-comp stuff.
2. PLAN
Since I needed to make 4 walls, 1 bottom and 1 top for the box, I planned to use the router. First, I thought of using acrylic panel to cover the top, but after finding a nice acrylic bar, I decided to make it as the open top wooden tool box.

3. Execution
A.[Caliper] I measured the thickness of the router bit and the wood panel.

B. [Machine Saw] Since the measurement was set, I used the machine saw to cut the board. The board’s width was wide so I cut twice. However, instead of cutting twice , I could’ve used the panel saw and cut like a loaf of bread.

C. [Router] After cutting them, I used the router to make the routes. The routes allow them to fit together. Now I am more aware of the right amount of cut of the router. (Little by Little).

D. [Machine Saw/ Sanding Machine, Speed Square] Now, I wanted to make the box by the minor joints(45°) which looks cool. Looking good does not mean working good……  I used the Machine Saw which seemed making 45° well but the two pieces that I made with the sanding machine was awful. The sanding machine sanded the surface in a concave which made me unable to put them together. Also the two walls got shorter because the amount of the minor joint were gone. As a result, the bottom piece became longer than the original design.

E. [Machine Saw]  I did not want to invest more time to trim down the thick bottom on the router, so I used the thinner plywood. Also I cut off the 45° surface to make 90°.

F. [Machine Saw, Speed Square, Ruler]  Since the thinner board was shorter, I made two pieces to fit in the bottom. I cut them and assemble them.

G . [Band Saw, Drill Press, Spade Bit (Forstner Bit Recommended)] I used the band saw to cut the Acrylic bar. And I used the drill press to make holes for the bar. Since the shop had spade bit, I used it to make holes. I marked the depth of the hole on the bit before drilling so that I can prevent drilling through.

H.[Glue, C-Clamp, Laser Cutter] I used a wood glue to hold them together. I used buffer plates in-between the C-clamp. I waited until the glue drys and used laser cutter to raster etching.  counter bolt to hold them tight.

I. [Drill, Drill bit, Shank Counter bit, Counter Bolt] Since I wanted the box to be strong, I decided to use counter bolt to hold them together. Since there was no counter bit, I used drill bit to make holes first and used shank counter bit to make rooms for the counter bolts. After drilling, I put bolts in and the black bolts stood out nicely.

J. [Scissors, Black Foam Paper] I used a Black foam paper to fill in the holes made by the router because the counter bolts were black, I wanted to match them.

4. Completion

DOYOKI.COM>>

How it’s made : Blog

TASK : Make multiples of something, 5 or more.
The objects must be a multi-process piece.
(NOT 5 things made solely on the laser cutter or 3D printers).

1. Inspiration
A. I wanted cost-efficient on the product. “Cost-efficient” meaning, Low cost at high Wow effect.
B. I found nice pieces of ITP Floor which has a coated side.
C. I wanted to make something small that I can make out of the floor piece.
D. I thought of three things: chopsticks, desk tray and cradle for the smartphones.
I wanted to make the desk tray but the router cannot achieve the hollow shape, so I decided to make the smartphone cradle.

2. PLAN
A. Trim the pieces at the edge.
B. Make a route at the body.
C. Chop the pieces like a loaf of a bread.

3. Execution
A. [Machine Saw] I cut the two ends of the pieces.

B. [Machine Saw, Band Saw/ Not Recommended] I used the band saw to trim the longer edges and it was inaccurate. So I unconsciously used the machine saw to trim the longer edge which alert shop staff. Later found I could’ve used some buffer or custom jig.

C. [Machine Saw] After Trimming, I cut the trimmed pieces in to five which should’ve done after routing. After realizing the danger from the previous experience, I just wanted to finish the process related to the machine saw first. The small piece at the right is for the test.

D. [Router] First, I screw little bit of the bolt under the blue plate to eliminate the bump from the class. Now, I set the height of the router bit. I wanted to cut the route at twice so I set for the lower height.

E. [Router] I measured the two end distances of the guide to make it straight. Also I plug in the vacuum cleaner hose to the table. Now I needed parts that can push forward, press the side and press the material down.
  

F. [Router] I cut five first and second to achieve optimal depth of the route. It was difficult to push forward the pieces because the guide on the right has a break at the center for the vacuum cleaner. As I am pushing forward the pieces I found this bump annoying and blocking. Since the particles cut from the wood is flying to forward not to the vacuum, it will be better to have a solid guide. However, the router achieved the optimal height of the route.
  

G. [Drill Press] After placing the smartphone I recognized the need of the holes for the sound flow. So I drilled two holes at the bottom so that it can have a better sound.
  

H. [Sander Machine/ Sand Paper] I sanded the edges and surfaces of the cradle.
  

I. [Drill Press] I wanted to elaborate more on the products. So I drilled hollow shape to make sound flow better and to mark the number 00X/ 00X on the back.
  

4. Completion