Electropermanent Magnets with Kyle Gilpin MIT in EP 3 of the Flexible Elements Podcast

Kyle Gilpin

In this episode we hear Kyle Gilpin talk about his work with
electropermanent magnets. Electropermanent magnets make excellent
connectors for modular robots as they are strong, small, solid state,
consume power only when connecting or disconnecting, and they can also
handle communication and power transfer. We also hear about how Kyle
used electropermanent magnets to build a 12 mm cube robot pebble. It
uses controlled disassembly to “sculpt” objects by releasing the
modules that aren’t in the object you want. We also talk about using
electropermanent magnets in motor applications. They are interesting
in this context, as they can operate at low RPM’s, which is important
when modules scale and it gets harder to use gear boxes.”

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Electropermanent Magnets with Kyle Gilpin MIT in EP 3 of the flexible_elements Podcast

Robot Pebbles With Components

Kyle Gilpin is a PhD student in the Distributed Robotics Laboratory at
MIT.  He holds BS and MEng degrees in Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science from MIT. Gilpin works to improve communication and
control in large distributed robotic systems.  His past projects
include developing ultra-wide band radios, real-time image processing
systems, and  reconfigurable sensor nodes.  Before beginning his PhD,
Gilpin spent two years working as a senior electrical engineer at
Proteus Biomedical developing several ultra-low-power implantable
devices. Gilpin is the recipient of both NSF and NDSEG fellowships.

Show notes
- Kyle Gilpin http://www.csail.mit.edu/user/1613
- Daniela Rus http://www.csail.mit.edu/user/876
- Ara Knaian http://www.csail.mit.edu/user/1762
- I can really recomend Aras great theses on the Electropermanent Magnets
http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/60151/681600109.pdf?sequence=1
- A great Home page for the pebbles project
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/drl/wiki/index.php?title=Robot_Pebbles
- New Results and Ideas for Self-Assembly of 3D Structures Kyle Gilpin
and Daniela Rus
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/drl/wiki/images/3/3f/RobotPebbles-GilpinKnaianRus-ICRA10.pdf
-Also look at Kyle Gilpin, Ara Knaian, and Daniela Rus, “Robot
pebbles: One centimeter modules for programmable matter through self
disassembly,” in IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA),May
2010 http://groups.csail.mit.edu/drl/wiki/images/3/3f/RobotPebbles-GilpinKnaianRus-ICRA10.pdf
- Reconfiguration by self-disassemble
http://www.csail.mit.edu/videoarchive/research/robo/self-disassembly
- I made a mistake saying that it was a Da Vinci quote, it was
probably Michelangelo
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/michelangelo.html