The Little Robots to move Big Things project is motivated by the paradigm in modern robotics that most robots are incapable of manipulating objects that are even a small proportion of the robot’s mass. This project seeks to overturn this trend by using small robots to create large forces by leveraging the reaction forces created through interactions with fixed objects in the workspace.
The SEAL Pack is versatile, portable, and quickly deployable, similar to the Navy SEALs. SEAL stands for SEa, Air, and Land and the SEAL Pack is versatile enough to traverse all three. The SEAL Pack is transported in a compact way, and can be unpacked into either a car, boat, or quadrotor in a matter of minutes thanks to its modular design.
The Modular Robotics Laboratory (Dean Wilhelmi, Stella Latscha, Matthew Piccoli) collaborated with other technology studios from Penn (IKStudio under Simon Kim) and Harvard, as well as dance studio Carbon Dance Theatre (co-choreographers: Meredith Rainey & Marcel W. Foster) to create a dance performance blending art and technology called Science Per Forms.