Week 2: hydraulic surprises!

     I have to say that the bootcamp was most influential in educating me about the various usages of hydraulic power; more so than my internship simply because my REU site works very specifically with some robotic actuators. That is what they specialize in, so there aren't many other applications beyond that. That is certainly not to say how impressed I am with the work they have been doing here. I work in a lab called the "Human Dynamics and Controls Lab". They've done a multitude of work that mainly revolves around the development of automated assistive (orthotic) machinery using pneumatic powered actuators that are used as artificial muscles. Recently I've been working on the effects of an open system on a type of pneumatically powered actuator called Fiber-Reinforced Elastomeric Enclosures (or FREE's). These actuators were designed by studying certain biologically based muscles strands that enclose and are controlled by some sort of fluid based hydraulic system. Elephant's trunks and octopus tentacles are some examples. The actuator works based on how strands are wrapped around an elastic-like tube and angled with reference to one another as they traverse the tube from beginning to end. Based on the angle difference between strands, when a pneumatic fluid causes a pressure change within the FREE, it will contract in various ways. It's quite astounding! Normally these types of actuators operate within closed systems, but we want to see how they operate in open systems, so that is what I have been testing (and what the picture I've included shows behind me). Ultimately, they want to develop an exosuit that is composed of these FREE's and is powered by an SCBA (self contained breathing apparatus), so this is one of the first steps in seeing how these actuators will behave in a system like that. 

p.s. I don't normally dress like this in lab, but I just came from working out ¯\_(ツ)_/¯