Research Projects

"Artificial Muscle Driven Wearable Soft-Robot Systems for Enhanced Worker Capability and Safety"  
soft-robotics system can potentially provide a safer workspace environment compared to conventional hard-robotics-driven systems, which often augment natural human movement and capabilities (e.g. glovebox operators). Recent advances in Liquid-based Electro-active Artificial Muscle (LEAM) have created a unique opportunity to combine material engineering, fluid mechanics, robotic engineering, and biomimetics. In particular, LEAM can be applied to small-to-medium scale structures of an arbitrary shape. The proposed project seeks to further explore a type of LEAM currently being developed at PI Kim’s laboratory at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).

"Bioinspired Multi-Functional Soft Materials for Naval Applications."
The main objective of this proposal is to investigate the underlying transduction principle (i.e., actuation and sensing) of an M-FSM of interest, Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) gels. PVC gels have recently been shown to be very promising within the M-FSM space; notably due to their electrically controllable large deformation, silent actuation, excellent force output, and concurrent sensing capabilities. The research tasks primarily focus on establishing a fundamental framework regarding PVC gel actuators and sensors through experimental characterization efforts and theoretical physics-based modeling.