Pneumatic Characterization Fixture
In grad school, I designed many soft systems which were responsive to pneumatic input signals. While the soft systems themselves - robots, actuators, walkers, ect. - were most publishable, I had no off the shelf way of characterizing their performance.
This means prescribing (and validating) input signals, and measuring outputs. In our research we are interested in prescribing pressure profiles and simultaneously logging output motions, forces, flowrates, and electrical resistances.
Over a year I iterated towards a general-use Pneumatic Test Stand: an open-source fixture built around commodity pneumatic components and data acquisition hardware. These animations show an example dataset from an early paper on a self-sensing pneumatic actuator: the fixture monitors prescribes and monitors the input pressure while recording actuator deflection, electrical resistance of a strain sensor, and force measured by a load cell.
The fixture is designed to be adaptable, attractive, and easily fabricated with a 3D printer, laser cutter, and hex key set.
The fixture has been used to gather data on at least two journal publications and three conference proceedings, and continues to evolve in its use to this day. Stay tuned for a forthcoming methods proceedings detailing the design and operation of the fixture.
This data was gathered in collaboration with Travis Hainsworth at the University of Colorado Boulder
This fixture has been in a public space as a shared tool for three years, and I think what has protected it from ruin above all rules, log books, signage, ect. is simply that it looks a little nicer than it has to.
We slow down when we drive past nice buildings, and we take a little more care and attention to well-designed equipment.
