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Experimental Robotics pp 435–449Cite as

A Design Environment for the Rapid Specification and Fabrication of Printable Robots

Part of the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics book series (STAR,volume 109)

Abstract

In this work, we have developed a design environment to allow casual users to quickly and easily create custom robots. A drag-and-drop graphical interface allows users to intuitively assemble electromechanical systems from a library of predesigned parametrized components. A script-based infrastructure encapsulates and automatically composes mechanical, electrical, and software subsystems based on the user input. The generated design can be passed through output plugins to produce fabrication drawings for a range of rapid manufacturing processes, along with the necessary firmware and software to control the device. From an intuitive description of the desired specification, this system generates ready-to-use printable robots on demand.

Keywords

  • Design co-generation
  • Personal robots
  • Printable robots

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Acknowledgments

This material is based on research sponsored by the National Science Foundation awards EFRI-1240383 and CCF-1138967, for which the authors express thanks.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA

    Ankur Mehta, Byoungkwon An & Daniela Rus

  2. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Nicola Bezzo, Peter Gebhard, Vijay Kumar & Insup Lee

Authors
  1. Ankur Mehta
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  2. Nicola Bezzo
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  3. Peter Gebhard
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  4. Byoungkwon An
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  5. Vijay Kumar
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  6. Insup Lee
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  7. Daniela Rus
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ankur Mehta .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    M. Ani Hsieh

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Oussama Khatib

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Vijay Kumar

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Mehta, A. et al. (2016). A Design Environment for the Rapid Specification and Fabrication of Printable Robots. In: Hsieh, M., Khatib, O., Kumar, V. (eds) Experimental Robotics. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 109. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23778-7_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23778-7_29

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