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| Shadow Air Muscle - Shadow Air Muscle Company | |
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EDUCATION RESOURCES | ||||||
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The Innovation Process Designing by 3d models You may be surprised to learn that Richard doesn't usually draw anything. If he does draw it's usually after making something when he needs an exact record for a patent (G)application. This has to be a drawing and it has to show how to make the item, and it has to capture what is new about the idea. He designs/invents by making, as his main concern is always whether something will work in practice and drawings will not tell you that. So his workshop contains stacks of drawers and boxes of oddments of materials (copper tubes; rods and wires; sheet metal off-cuts etc), components (valves and pneumatic tubing; electric motors and batteries etc) and odds and ends (even yoghurt pots and string!). This means that he can rapidly find things that he can model into parts of a robot as he's designing, so he isn't slowed down in his thinking. The Shadow robot builders also find that they often have to adapt common tools so they will reach into awkward places or hold peculiar shapes. They have an enormous collection of these tools including a lot of operating theatre instruments from hospital surgeons. Look at the picture of the robot hand and arm and you will see why special tools are needed to put it together.
As none of their models are to be finished items they are like sketches rather than drawings - sketch models - doing the same job as a sketch, working out ideas in a not very sure, tentative, way. And like sketch drawings, whilst not looking very polished and pretty, they have to be clear and accurate. Otherwise they don't prove anything. In fact, these sketch models can be very complex and are almost always made extremely well - to prove how well they work - but with no extra time spent on them with 'finishes'. There is no polishing or painting, nothing that takes time without adding to the ideas. Sometimes they use a hot-melt glue gun to tack things together temporarily, test how it functions and then take it apart again to alter parts to work better. Because they are engaged on a very long term task most of the sketch models they make tend to get to about 80% finished before they see the limitations of the idea and move onto a better approach. "It's difficult to know when to stop - it might work if I finish it, but usually we abandon ideas as soon as we see the beginning of a new one that looks better" Richard Greenhill Knowing when to stop making changes to a design is almost always a difficulty. This is referred to as 'freezing a design' (G) He doesn't worry about each design variation not being regarded as successful. "Trying to avoid failure is likely to produce something of no interest. If you want to 'take a step' you must welcome failures along the way" Richard Greenhill Keeping the project going "Sometimes I feel a great resistance to taking a muscle apart and re-forming it. Many engineers won't touch this stuff - it's too soft, too unclear what I need to do. Sometimes when we meet a problem it's quite painful, I want to do anything but tackle it. You know you can do it, a colleague criticises your ideas but you keep going - almost pretend that you know what you're doing, and eventually you come through. We now make a practice of keeping a 'lab notebook' (which records what we do as we go along) as it would protect our intellectual property rights (G)by recording when we did things, but it's hard to make yourself spend the time. We use video a lot to keep a record of what we did when - we can show them to people - and they show things working before you take them to pieces to do it a better way. We also use videos to show people how clever we are - which you have to do if you are applying for a grant." The Shadow Company's success in gaining a 'Smart' grant from the government's Department of Trade and Industry will help them through the expensive development phase of their latest hand robot until it starts making them some money. It took them two attempts at applying for the grant though, and they continue to look for more funds to help support their research and development. |
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Robot
hand and forearm under development 
