The GummiArm project was initiated to develop a robot arm that could interact physically with the environment, while developing its sensorimotor skills, and without expensive breakdowns from collisions. The arm can vary its stiffness by co-contracting its rubbery tendons, and is quite robust to impacts in the ‘relaxed’ state. A broken piece can be redesigned, reprinted, and assembled in minutes, thanks to the 3D printable structure.
Dr. Martin Stoelen was one of my supervisors during my PhD (2013-2017) and I helped him on this project initially as a volunteer and later as Technical Engineer. During this period, I was the main developer for GummiArm’s ROS/Moveit! interface and I also worked optimising motors/communication, putting together demos, supervising masters students and many other things.