[HN Gopher] Printed robots with bones, ligaments, and tendons
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Printed robots with bones, ligaments, and tendons
Author : cainxinth
Score : 176 points
Date : 2023-11-16 12:56 UTC (10 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (ethz.ch)
| WesSouza wrote:
| Cue Westworld opening theme.
| rob74 wrote:
| Right, didn't know what those hands reminded me of
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgvXU5R-xWs&t=33s), thanks for
| the hint!
| nwoli wrote:
| Westworld will be a literal inspiration to entrepreneurs of the
| future (building theme parks of the same type)
| jtr1 wrote:
| https://nitter.net/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538?l.
| ..
| rob74 wrote:
| "at long last, we have created the Torment Nexus" (EDIT:
| didn't notice that the link posted by jtr1 points to the
| original "Torment Nexus" tweet)
| gattr wrote:
| I agree. We'll have life-like androids for all kinds of
| entertainment (not AGI-controlled, just some fancy future-
| generation LLM) sooner than direct neural interfaces for
| full-immersion VR or stuff like that.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Doesn't look like anything to me.
| tpetr wrote:
| These violent delights have violent ends
| lucubratory wrote:
| Hook it up to GPTs based on GPT-7, build the theme park...
| frankly, yeah, Westworld seems way, way more achievable in the
| short term than it seemed when I watched it way back when.
|
| That said, while 3D printing like this may advance and be
| useful, I think more normal humanoid robots that are covered in
| a human layer is much more likely.
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| > I think more normal humanoid robots that are covered in a
| human layer is much more likely.
|
| In Westworld the first versions of the hosts were exactly
| that, and progressed to the more... fleshy... kind later on.
| tycho-newman wrote:
| Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human hand.
| MeteorMarc wrote:
| Can the hand operate a 3D-printed gun?
| ilaksh wrote:
| https://i.imgur.io/NOjtQXr_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&f...
|
| I used to own a unique sculpture (created by an artist from
| Tijuana) that embodied that phrase.
| tpetr wrote:
| Cool!
| rob74 wrote:
| Bones, ligaments and tendons... now they just need synthetic
| muscles! (I know there is research on that, but not sure if the
| current "state of the art" has performance comparable to "meat"
| muscles)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I think the technology to 3D print at the cellular-protein
| scale (microns to nanometers) is a ways off still. For anything
| like muscle, you'd need micromachines (comparable to actin-
| myosin) linking fibers (in muscle they're about 50um in
| diameter and a few centimeters long) that would work in
| coordination using some kind of energy (in animals the fuel is
| ATP) source.
| Euphorbium wrote:
| I remember there was analogous project, that used inflatable
| muscles. It was at least 10 years ago, and at the time seemed
| like something from science fiction, but it was a real thing.
| ssfrr wrote:
| The status quo they describe is a printing process where material
| is deposited and then UV cured, then there's some kind of
| scraping process. That seems like a hybrid of FDM and
| lithographic printing from a vat of goo a la FormLabs.
|
| Is that a common process?
| syntaxing wrote:
| Industrial equipment uses this technique often for different
| purposes like glueing. Might seem obvious but the scraping is
| an artifact from the UV curing, it happens for SLA printers
| too. There's a reason why the vat is a FEP film since it has
| lubricating properties like PTFE so each layer peels off
| easily. Also fun fact, that's what carbon3D printers are so
| damn fast. They have a semi permeable film that lets oxygen
| through which creates a thin barrier of "cured yet viscous"
| resin between the film and part so they don't have to wait to
| peel or scrape anything.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| I think this is one of the areas the whole "AI revolution" is
| lacking.
|
| "Cognition", vision and generally the sensor parts are pretty
| advanced by now, ex: all the latest GPTs and vision Apis. But the
| actuator parts of the equation are pretty much the same as years
| ago.
|
| I think a large part of this is the old industry saying:
| "Software is cheap/easy, Hardware is expensive/hard", These days
| "robots" pretty much means a robot arm that is either a clunky
| pile of parts with an Arduino for the hobbyist market or a multi-
| thousand dollar industrial arm to move card boxes.
|
| I also don't know if human movement is a well understood problem
| yet, everything I've seen until now looks pretty much a better
| version of movement from a 's sci-fi robot movie ( I'm not
| discounting the difficulty of this, just pointing out )
|
| Maybe this is the calm before the storm, now it's all "chat bots"
| and it's mostly inside our computers, when humanoid robots start
| to roam the streets and affecting the physical World it will be
| another ball game.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I'm not sure the angels necessarily need physical robotic
| bodies, or just have to have consequences of their direct
| actions fed back, to get grounded. They can search the Web
| already, and kind of able to close a long loop when additional
| training is done upon them using the data contaminated with
| searches they make.
| civilitty wrote:
| The sensors are not advanced at all. Things like pressure and
| texture sensing along with positional feedback are still
| extremely primitive compared to what human hands are capable
| of.
|
| This might be a little progress towards miniaturizing muscles
| but we've still got a long way to go on the whole package.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I wonder if there could be a way to use this technique to 3d
| print something like HASEL actuators for artificial muscles to go
| along with the tendons and bones.
| cmanion wrote:
| I have been able to partially print them[0]. The electrodes we
| used could have been inkjet printed* and there is some
| potential of printing the dielectric fluid too. In the process
| I developed, the HASELs had to be filled with dielectric fluid
| during postprocessing, but it has been shown that it is
| possible to print closed volumes of fluid with inkjet 3d
| printers[1]. Although there is some risk the dielectric fluid
| could interfere with the curing of the polymer.
|
| *We also were able to develop a technique for printing
| electrodes without modifying the printer, but this hasn't been
| published yet
|
| [0]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343949671_Modeling_
| ...
|
| [1]https://www.csail.mit.edu/news/first-ever-3-d-printed-
| robots...
| ilaksh wrote:
| Congratulations! If one were to try to commercialize this
| (assuming further development), do you think the Artimus
| Robotics patents would be a problem?
| btbuildem wrote:
| Reminds me of the Leeloo creation scene in 5th Element
| numpad0 wrote:
| Oh, so this isn't about optimizing torque/force distribution for
| axes? I always thought it'll be neat if I could move an arm
| parallel or orthogonal to an axis, simply by setting such
| predetermined set of servos to exact same values, thanks to such
| clever cross-coupling of joints. A bit like CoreXY, but requiring
| actual maths to set up, but computationally cheap to use.
|
| When us humans animate, don't we tend to reveal such type of
| optimization that we can just add power to limbs to translate
| object, rather precisely, along cardinal directions as well as
| parallel directions, relative to our mental origin point? This is
| often explained as human brains being smart and doing fast IK
| calculations, but I doubt it.
|
| But I ended out creeping out someone while trying to show how _I_
| can easily mouse-drag my wrist joint parallel to screen
| coordinates, so in cases above didn 't apply to most, just
| disregard :p
| gene-h wrote:
| It is a shame that inkjet UV cure 3D printers haven't caught on
| with hobbyists. Inkjet 3D printers are awesome, the resolution is
| hard to beat, you can make parts with multiple materials as was
| shown in the article. Some can even print in color. But currently
| these machines tend to be very expensive, as in $250,000 and up.
| Worse, allegedly if you want to make full use of the printer's
| capability you have to sign over your IP to the company that made
| the printer.
|
| Some people at MIT figured out how to build one cheaply and IIRC
| they even released plans for it online.[0]
|
| You can also buy phone case printers on AliExpress which use the
| same inkjet UV cure process for about $1500[1]. They allegedly
| have some limited capability to do 3D too.
|
| So it is possible to build 3d printers like this cheap enough
| that hobbyists could afford them. I suspect the reason they
| haven't caught on is due to patents, one may not even be able to
| sell a kit to make such printers
|
| [0]https://cdfg.mit.edu/publications/multifab-machine-vision-
| as... [1]https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2261799819029324.html
| Kuinox wrote:
| I tried to see what it take to build one. My first issue is
| that there is very little information about how the tech work.
| This article inkjet tech isn't the same one than the powder +
| inkjet:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_bed_and_inkjet_head_3D_...
|
| > the resolution is hard to beat
|
| Are you sure it's on the same level than the regular hobbyist
| resin printers ? Thoses have 35 um to 50 um resolution.
| gene-h wrote:
| I am not referring to powder bed inkjet 3d printing, I am
| referring to making parts by inkjetting UV curable polymer.
| The 3D printer mentioned in the article, the cheap 3d printer
| previously made at MIT, and the phone case printer available
| on AliExpress all use this process. >resolution The inkjets
| used have similar DPI as those used in 2D printers, so
| resolution can be as small as 13-16 micrometers[0]
| [1]https://www.rnd-tech.com/3d-printers-product-
| lines/polyjet/e...
|
| [1]https://www.3dsystems.com/sites/default/files/2020-08/3d-s
| ys...
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Objet printers use this tech, projet too
| Kuinox wrote:
| > am referring to making parts by inkjetting UV curable
| polymer.
|
| Yes, I said they were not the same, my point is there isn't
| even a Wikipedia article about it. I don't see how
| technologically it can reach better accuracy than current
| resin printer that are based on lithography technics. It's
| just a multi material resin printer but sounds way harder
| to do for an hobbyist.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| They haven't caught on outside of R&D and industrial uses
| because they're maintenance nightmares.
|
| Think of an inkjet printer that prints honey, and the honey
| hardens when exposed to light.
|
| The maintenance, the bad chemicals your exposed to in the
| printing, curing, cleaning processes, etc.
|
| They're nightmares, you would not want it in your home. Same
| reason I don't have a sla printer, not worth it.
|
| The projet 3500 is the coolest printer in this space if you do
| want one. It's cool be a use the support material is paraffin
| wax, so to clean and cure the parts you just melt off the wax
| in a low temp oven and clean the parts in an ultrasonic cleaner
| with cooking oil in it.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| You can get a lower end objet or projet for like $30k, used
| ones for far less
| fortran77 wrote:
| "UV Cure" printers are a big mess to deal with. As a hobbyist,
| if I can do it with an "FDM" printer, I will!
| Eumenes wrote:
| what kind of composites will offer robots ballistic protection,
| while not sacrificing mobility?
| nick222226 wrote:
| Non-newtonian fluids filled with particles of inconel and
| layers of kevlar fiber?
| oooyay wrote:
| This reminds me of the real preemption to "West World". They had
| discovered cognitive machines and had them for some time, but
| printing "bodies" was the true break through that connected
| everything together. Pun intended.
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(page generated 2023-11-16 23:01 UTC)