Programmable Matter

Imagine thousands of little cubes autonomously assembling into any shape you want. If the structure breaks it fixes itself. And when you’re done, it disassembles. That's the idea behind self-reconfigurable robotics. It's like lego, but autonomous (and really hard to figure out). In my grad school work so far I have developed components of a stochastic fluidic assembly system. You can read more about this on our lab website.

Too much text? Try the poster!

Publications

• Tolley M. T., Kalontarov M., Neubert J., Erickson D., Lipson H. (2010) "Stochastic Modular Robotic Systems: A Study of Fluidic Assembly Strategies", IEEE Transactions on Robotics, Vol. 26, pp. 518-530. PDF
• Neubert, J., Cantwell, A., Constantin, S., Kalontarov, M., Erickson, D., Lipson, H. (2010) "A Robotic Module for Stochastic Fluidic Assembly of 3D Self-Reconfiguring Structures", Proc. Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'10), Anchorage AK, May 2010, pp 2479-2484. PDF

Tetrabot

Tetrabot is a tetrahedral machine I built during a stay at Cornell in summer 2007. While most machines avoid resonce (because it breaks them) this machine exploits resonance for moving - much like humans and animals do. What's so cool about tetrabot is that you can fully enclose it and it still moves. There's no need to worry about sand, dirt or water getting into the gears!

Publications

• Neubert, J., Stockton, J., Blechman, B., Lipson, H. (2010) "Tetrabot: Resonance Based Locomotion for Harsh Enviroments", Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'10), Taipei, Rep. of China (Taiwan), October 2010, in press.

Reviving
a 20-year-old robot arm

My Final Year Project at Imperial College London was about reverse engineering and fixing and old robot arm. I developed new control hard- and software based on National Instruments CompactRIO and LabVIEW with which the robot can be used as a teaching aid. You can read more about it in this National Instruments Featured Case Study or on DesignNews.com. Thanks to the experience collected during this project I passed the LabVIEW Associate Developers Exam in 2008.

Download Report
(PDF)

Data logging for a
Formula Student Car

Formula Student is a competition where students design, make and race small size racing cars. I was involved in a team project to build an autonomous data logging device to fit into Imperial College London's car in 2006/7. The project deviated a little and in the end we helped out in drop testing a lot but also delivered a robust data logger that ran off the car's on-board power system. The system was based on some National Instruments hardware and programmed in LabVIEW.