Giant Helium Balloon Catoms

From Code Lab Wiki

a photo of two giant helium balloon catoms in carnegie mellon's high bay

The Giant Helium Balloon Catoms project was a part of the Claytronics project. Catom is short for Claytronic Atom, a simple robotic module designed to function as a member of an ensemble of robot modules capable of autonomously reconfiguring into different shapes.

We built two of these 2 meter wide cubic modules in the Carnegie Mellon High Bay, the only space we could find large enough to house them. The modules featured the first generation of our electrostatic latch, which consisted of flat statically charged mylar panels.

[edit] Researchers

Michael Philetus Weller

Brian Kirby

Mustafa Emre Karagozler

Eugene Marinelli

TC Ng

WJ Lee

Seth Copen Goldstein

[edit] Papers

2006

M E Karagozler, B Kirby, W J Lee, E Marinelli, T C Ng, M P Weller and S C Goldstein. Ultralight Modular Robotic Building Blocks for the Rapid Deployment of Planetary Outposts, presented at RASC-AL 2006. pdf

[edit] Videos

[edit] Images

giant helium balloon catoms have a carbon fiber frame for actuated electrostatic flaps to attach to

diagram showing module movement