Seeing Everything Together
One of the most limiting factors of design is precisely envisioning the final product. I recently met with Dr. Nathan Usevitch and members of his team of engineers (including Isaac Weaver, Spencer Stowell, Chris Paul, James Wade, Mihai Stanciu, Kaite Varela) to discuss the design principles they employ while building a specialized soft robot, a subfield of robotics that emphasizes nonrigid and deformable robots. I was especially impressed by the impact of vision on their design process. This group of engineers is currently working on a triangle-shaped modular robot that can be reconfigured for several purposes in extreme environments. They have recently focused on using the robot on the surface of the Moon as part of the NASA BIG Idea Challenge. In our discussion, we focused on the importance of vision, communication, and iteration.
A collage of some design steps and deployment stages of the team’s and Dr. Usevitch’s soft robot
Sharing a Vision
While studying at Stanford for his PhD, Dr. Usevitch and a fellow graduate student began designing a modular multi-purpose soft robot. After graduating, Dr. Usevitch started improving on his design with a dedicated team and funding from NASA. After initial efforts, the team made its first working prototype. Reflecting on that occasion, Dr. Usevitch noted, “Seeing the physical device was worth months of trying to explain things. Seeing everything together was invaluable.” Suddenly, the team caught Dr. Usevitch’s vision for the project.
Team member James Wade agreed, saying, “Something that we observed is that Dr. Usevitch knows a lot about this robot because he built it for his PhD, and it was difficult communicating all that understanding to the rest of the team. Now that we’ve built it, when we look at it, we have enough familiarity with what the end result looks like that there are a lot more ideas about how we can improve it now, things that if we could have known before maybe we would have changed earlier, but in a large sense we had to have it in front of us to have that understanding.”
This principle can be applied widely across design to share a vision. A small prototype or visual anchors one’s understanding and enables better results. “Small things are very important. For things to run smoothly, you need to get into the details,” said Mihai Stanciu, who led the redesign. A model opens up minds to the details, streamlining the process of refining the design.
Dr. Usevitch pointed to other benefits, saying, “Helping students see the full picture is important because they feel empowered about the project, they feel ownership of the project. Whereas if they only see a small sliver, then they don’t really understand how it connects, they’re less motivated, they don’t feel responsible for it because they don't understand its implications in the whole system.” In essence, people identify more strongly with an idea when catalyzed by an object or experience. After building and seeing the first version of their robot, Dr. Usevitch and his team united around a shared vision.
Teamwork and Communication
Dr. Usevitch showed me some photos of the first robot he had built and described some of its limitations. He talked about the constraints of designing with a small team, saying, “There’s been a lot more progress as our team has grown. We’ve been able to focus on more details with a bigger team. It’s also enabled us to scale and build more units.”
A larger team has brought other challenges to the design process, however. Foremost has been communication. One team member described how subteams operated independently, and issues arose when it came time to integrate the different pieces because of the lack of communication. “Something that I noticed about working as a team,” said team member Chris Paul, “is that more people means more opportunity for ideas and diversity of ideas, although it also means that you have a harder time communicating things to everyone.” Successful designs are far more feasible with strong communication (read more about communication here).
Being in a team with a vision is formative for the team members. James shared advice about effective teamwork saying, “Communicate outcomes, not just assignments.” Spencer Stowell told me, “Teams can make it a bit less cohesive, like if one person did the whole design they would understand it all. However, you wouldn't have different perspectives and reality checks.” This team taught me that teamwork not only increases output but also personal growth.
″The Design is Never Done″
As with any design process, iterations are expected and welcomed. For this project, there was a large step up from small theoretical models to the full-scale robot. As such, the team took advantage of digital modeling tools to simulate multiple environments and recognize areas of weakness long before the robot began to take shape. They began with analyzing the history of Dr. Usevitch’s first models and expanding on them.
Mihai led much of the redesign process and emphasized the importance of iteration. “There’s a lot of design iterating. If this doesn’t work, go back, change, and iterate again.” James mentioned that having small goals provided opportunities to assess progress and facilitates the mindset of making small improvements.
Bringing ideas out of pure imagination and into reality is a complicated process, and Spencer discussed the necessity of making prototypes to evaluate the theories driving the design process. “The reality is,” he said, “you're going to need at least a few revisions before you reach the final product. So I lean more towards the ‘build low fidelity prototypes now, get them in front of you,’ so you can figure out the things wrong with the design quicker rather than trying to make it perfect and get it right the first time.”
Ultimately, “the design is never done,” said James. Some might sense the truth of this and keep refining their design indefinitely, and yet deadlines must also exist to promote actual progress. The team explained they took too much time refining the different pieces of the robot before integrating and now emphasize more self-imposed deadlines. Looking back, they would have preferred to integrate the pieces sooner rather than trying to make everything perfect. Simultaneously, this principle gave the team members inspiration to keep designing and keep improving beyond setbacks and failures.
Dr. Usevitch’s team hard at work
This team is innovating new technology for use on the moon, but their designs have relevant applications on the earth. Modular machines could be key to the exploration of extreme environments, such as the arctic or mountains. Successful design involves many components, but creating a shared vision, communicating throughout the design process, and prototyping are specific methods that bring design to the next level. When a team can picture the final product together, innovation is just around the corner. For more information about Dr. Usevitch and his team, visit the Compliant Mechanisms and Robotics group webpage.
