McKibben Creature

McKibben Creature

Overview

The McKibben Creature is a low-cost robot that is solely actuated by McKibben muscles. Materials such as corrugated cardboard and other readily available materials can be used for construction. All robots must address 3 challenges: locomotion, collection, and storage. Students will be working in teams of 3-4 to design and produce these robots. At the end of the project, students will compete in a simulated environment to collect small “food” tokens. Tokens can be placed at varying elevation levels with differing values of points.

This report has been written into a peer-reviewed conference paper. For further details into the curricular context of this particular project, please refer to the paper [1].

Course Implementation

Potential Course(s) Implemented:

  • First-year Engineering course
  • Sophomore-year Engineering course
  • Highschool STEM related courses
Fundemental Engineering Concepts: Balancing Mechanical Forces

Pre-requisite courses/topics needed: N/A

Expected Timeline: 8-11 Weeks

Learning Outcomes: 
  • Applying knowledge of mechanical forces and torque
  • Practice approaching design challenges parametrically
  • Optimize a product design given constraints
  • Design a soft robotic system to accomplish a task
  • Evaluating competitors and stategizing design

Theory Application

Understand the acutation principle and underlying engineering theory applies to this project.

Project Description

See the breakdown of how this project will be implemented in a course including instructor prep, materials, and phase timeline.

Sample Prototype

See how the developers fabricated the prototype of this project.

Contributors

Joseph Midiri / Kathy Trieu / Douglas Snyder

References

[1] Midiri, J. R., & Trieu, K., & Xue, W., & Trkov, M., & Jamison, C. S. E., & Bakrania, S. (2024, June), BYOE: McKibben Creature - A Low-Cost Robotic Simulation of A Biological Environment Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--48435

[2] “What Is a Pneumatic Actuator and How Do They Work?” Process Industry Forum, www.processindustryforum.com/article/what-is-a-pneumatic-actuator. Accessed 15 Mar. 2024.

[3] R. H. Gaylord, “Fluid actuated motor system and stroking device,” 2844126, Jul. 22, 1958 [Online]. Available: https://patents.google.com/patent/US2844126A/en