Digitizing Tactile Sensing into Tactile Solutions
Tactile sensing with the sensitivity of human touch.
Design Projects
Throughout my tenure at GelSight, I had many opportunities to design and prototype a variety of concepts:
Bio-mimetic scanner
This arm scanning prototype was designed to examine tendons during wrist flexion and finger manipulation. GelSight founder, Kimo Johnson, used this prototype to train an artificial intelligence model to recognize these movements and report back to the user.
The updated prototype features a modular, fastener-less design. Included in the updates are wrist straps for stability, branding, walls for light occlusion, and a more sophisticated locking system for the camera rail. The overall size was reduced by 33%, making the concept more accessible for this use case.
Ski measuring Jig prototype
Early 2022, an opportunity arose to work with applications engineers in GelSight to better enable the Norwegian Ski Team as part of their pre-race preparation to measure their skis & snow to determine the degree of grind necessary for the ski edges. The prototype increased reliability and reproducibility of these scans by insuring centering and removing operator inconsistency.
The goal of these jigs is two-fold: the cut out creates one backstop ensuring the area of importance is centered in the field of view, another backstop limiting the depth of a scan by setting z-axis dimension. Together, these backstops allow the user to reproducibly measure the length of a ski with each scan at the same depth.
GelSight Mini Accessory
To increase ergonomic considerations of the Gelsight Mini, I prototyped some attachments and handles that enable different modes of scanning.
The goal of this handle add-on was to increase wield-ability of the device. This shape would be shared with customers so designers and roboticists on the consumer side could design their own handles and attachments that fit their specific cycle of use.
Apparel
Designed branded hoodie as a trade-show giveaway and internal promotional item.
This concept contains a robotic arm reaching out of the front pocket towards the back, juggling sample scans.
To make the design more eye-catching, I added a fingerprint scan.
The final concept has the same general theme as the first, but is more readily manufacturable.
