During his internship at Willow Garage, Aaron Blasdel, a recent graduate from The University of Tokyo, developed software to model and analyze robotic grippers.
Due to the broad and varied nature of the robot grasping and manipulation problem, new and interesting grippers are regularly constructed. Aaron constructed models of the Robotiq 3-Fingered Adaptive Gripper and various configurations of the Sandia Hand for the publicly available GraspIt! simulator. In the case of the Robotiq hand, the challenge was to model in simulation its mechanical adaptation capabilities. For the modular Sandia Hand, which uses fingers magnetically attached to a palm structure to form a virtually limitless number of possible designs, Aaron analyzed and compared a number of different configurations. For both hands, he then used the simulation engine to pre-compute grasps for a large set of common household objects.
Simulation and optimization can help us better use existing hand models, and also find new points in the design space which can in turn lead to functional improvements in the future.
Adafruit has had paid day off for voting for our team for years, if you need help getting that going for your organization, let us know – we can share how and why we did this as well as the good results. Here are some resources for voting by mail, voting in person, and some NY resources for our NY based teams as well. If there are additional resources to add, please let us know – adafruit.com/vote
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
