Light is not a practical medium to display information three dimensionally, since it's extremely hard to make it bend, start and/or stop in mid air, which are necessary for constructing true three dimensional shapes and not simple 2D rasterizations. This is when I came up with the idea of making a closed mesh of robotic polygons. That is, a mesh of edges that can expand and contract, as well as vertices that can control their angle in both the horizontal and vertical axis. Whilst this results in a very neat display, I soon realized it's potential as a general purpose robot.
Theoretically, this could fit in your pocket and grow to the size and shape of a human, and then proceed to do physical labor for you. This bridges the gap between display and robot, it might bring robotics to the general consumer and it has the potential to replace purpose built robotics. But if it does none of those things, it will at the very least look cool.
I've been working on designs for closed meshes of robotic nurbs and have settled on a final design. It uses continuum robots attached to tensioning/locking cap, which is then connected to modified hobsons joints that replace the smooth rods with expanding sliders, which then connect to a multiplexed driver, turning two or more motors into infinite rotational outputs. These are technically nurbs and not polygons, which have a lot of benefits over polygons in the real world. 2D rasterization of nurbs is hard but real life implementation is easier than polygons, since a continuum has less physical variables to control than a polygon.
I understand this might be hard to understand right now, but I'm planning on slowly updating this topic over time with more information and updates. I am about to receive my prusa and mmu, and that will hopefully help me make my first functional mesh.
I am making this topic not to brag about how cool i am, but to hopefully encourage you to pursue the field of mesh morphing robotics. I believe it is the future of both display technology and robotics, but again at the very least it looks cool. I hope some of you can design functional meshes that make mine look stupid. To make this interesting, I am willing to give away a brand new prusa to the first person who makes an open hand close into a fist, morph into a face, then smile in under a minute with a minimum of 48 edges. You're welcome to use any design that results in a mesh morphing robot.
Here's some assorted media to help you understand:
Existing Examples: [
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My Videos: [
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Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2020 05:34AM by Polygen.
