Soft Materials

Elastomeric foams with embedded photonic senors for 3D touch recognition This work was completed as a final project for Bart Selman's CS 6700: Advanced Artificial Intelligence graduate course at Cornell. For this project, I designed and fabricated a soft touch sensor using an elastomeric foam with embedded infrared (IR) LEDs and receivers. The soft [...]

Soft actuators for kinesthetic interactions in virtual reality Traditional game controllers rely on vibrotactile feedback as the only haptic sensation transmitted to the user. With the advent of consumer virtual reality platforms, users now have the ability to more deeply immerse themselves into videogames with visuals that match every head movement. The ability [...]

Overview We have developed a hyperelastic light emitting capacitor (HLEC) that can expand its surface area by >635% while actively emitting light and sensing this deformation. The center layer is a thin sheet of silicone with embedded ZnS phosphors that glow under a high electric field. Transparent, ionically conductive hydrogel electrodes sandwich the center dielectric [...]

Organic Robotics Laboratory The Organic Robotics Laboratory led by Dr. Shepherd at Cornell University is an interdisciplinary team of mechanical engineers, materials scientists, and chemists. We are creating new breed of soft robots that mimic the capabilities of living organisms. By using soft materials such as elastomers and hydrogels we can create new modes of human/machine interaction . We are [...]

As a student at North Carolina State University, I performed research in Dr. Seelecke's Adaptive Structures Lab. During this time, my focus was working with Dielectric Electro-Active Polymers (DEAPs). DEAPs are thin, stretchable capacitors that can be used as either actuators or sensors. By applying a high electric field, the shape and stiffness of the [...]