ChromaBot - Prototyping Soft Robotic Actuators with Integrated Electrochromic Displays

Abstract

Fig. 1. Examples of two different soft-robotic actuators with build in electrochromic displays produced with the ChromaBot method.Soft robotics -robots built from highly compliant materials that resemble soft biological materials -have recently become more popular especially in industry settings, given their ability to handle fragile objects. One problem however of these devices is that they can only communicate intend or the need for help through movement. To overcome this limitation, in this paper we present ChromaBot, a method towards prototyping soft robotic actuators with integrated printed electrochromic displays. Our method only degrades the longevity of the soft robotic actuator in an acceptable manner while at the same time allows for a more expressive soft robot. We present detailed instructions on how to prototype ChromaBot as well as an initial analysis of the durability, both of the display as well as of the actuator.CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); • Computer systems organization → Robotics.

Service Design Methods for the Design of Smart Surfaces

“…EC materials are not light emitting, making them suitable for environments such as the bedroom, where artificial light may have negative impact on human sleep patterns (Czeisler, 2013). Finally, EC displays are very thin (around 3 mm), flexible and can be produced in in any shape (Jensen, Colley, Häkkilä, et al, 2019), which enables their integration into a variety of different products as user interfaces (Colley, Genç, et al, 2021) or soft robots (Löchtefeld & Milthers, 2021), and are specifically suited for interactive smart surfaces.…”

ECPlotter: A Toolkit for Rapid Prototyping of Electrochromic Displays

“…TransPrint [16,31,32] extends this line of work by presenting a fabrication process for screen-printing electrochromic displays, which uses an off-the-shelf hardware setup that can be used in makerspace activities [18] by non-experts to produce their own display designs. Based on this technique also a variety of prototypical applications have been developed in the past, ranging from simple user interfaces [4], notifications [36], hybrid board games [21], over ambient lighting [19,20], wearables [5,15,17], as part of a learning activity [30] or in a soft robot [34]. For our research, we built onto this work and will try to automate the fabrication process of electrochromic displays using printed electronics.…”