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About the Lab

Hi everyone, thanks for your interest in the Matter Assembly Computation Lab! Our research in the MACLab is motivated by the observation that designing robots, and electromechanical systems, is difficult, time-consuming, and requires a great deal of experience. Practitioners need to be skilled in mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering. Instead, what if making a robot could be as easy as specifying the behaviors or capabilities you want, asking software tools to design the robot, and then printing the robot? This is the overall inspiration for what we’re trying to do in the MACLab.

In support of this general goal we work in several research subareas:

Design automation for multimaterial fabrication
Multimaterial simulation
Fabrication automation (which involves making new 3D printers and control software)
3D-printable material development and testing.

News

5/5/20

Professor MacCurdy was issued a US patent on hybrid 3D printing methods System and methods for additive manufacturing of electromechanical assemblies
R MacCurdy, H Lipson
US Patent 10,645,812 2020

5/1/20

Our paper about digital evolution was published in MIT press Artificial Life journal The surprising creativity of digital evolution: A collection of anecdotes from the evolutionary computation and artificial life research communities
J Lehman, J Clune, D Misevic, C Adami, L Altenberg, J Beaulieu, ...
Artificial Life 26 (2), 274-306 133 2020

4/15/20

Our paper demonstrating a fully 3D-printed, self-sensing multimaterial soft actuator was published in RAL. A Fabrication Free, 3D Printed, Multi-Material, Self-Sensing Soft Actuator T Hainsworth, L Smith, S Alexander, R MacCurdy IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters 5 (3), 4118-4125 2020

4/8/19

Brandon was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!

4/3/19

Brandon was selected for honorable mention for NDSEG fellowship!

11/20/18

Professor MacCurdy was issued a US patent on software-defined radio-frequency tracking methods Programmable tracking device and related methods R MacCurdy, S Powell, R Gabrielson, D Winkler US Patent 10,132,931

5/11/18

Our paper about designing and fabricating compliant, handed shearing-auxetic actuators was published in Science! These three videos (Vid1, Vid2, Vid3) demonstrate the system.

4/24/18

Our paper about fabricating compliant robotic grippers based on handed shearing-auxetic actuators was presented at RoboSoft, 2018. This video demonstrates the system.

3/21/18

Our paper about designing and testing a soft, untethered robot fish was published in Science Robotics! This video shows the system.

10/15/17

Professor MacCurdy is the general chair, along with Dave Levin from U. Toronto and Neil Gershenfeld, of this year's ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication (SCF), which will be held June 17-19, 2018 at MIT. Neil's Center for Bits and Atoms is hosting the SCF this year.