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The Gluss Project

The Gluss Project is an attempt to build flubber---that is, to make a controllable material that assumes any shape. Gluss = Slug + Truss.

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The Gluss Project builds on the work of Buckminster Fuller and Prof. Arthur C. Sanderson to build robots out of linear actuators---machines that can build change their length. In this way we make a modular robot that can crawl but can also exert force on the environment---or simply resist force. In this way we can make a bridge that crawls quickly into place.

I've been working on this for a year, and significant progress has been made. The robot can now crawl and turn and change shape in effective ways.

Every part of this project is open-source. Research is ongoing, and progress is accelerating. I hope the next version of the robot can climb stairs. I seek collaborators who are artists, philosophers, writers, videographers, electrical engineers, physicists, mechanical engineers, mathematicians and computer scientists.

This project is mostly documented via GitHub Pages: https://pubinv.github.io/gluss/

The shortest introduction is probably the videos at the PubInv Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJQg_dkDY3KTP1ybugYwReg, where you will find motivational videos and more like this:

For the technically minded, you may wish to review a technical paper: https://github.com/PubInv/gluss/blob/gh-pages/doc/Gluss.pdf

Note that The Gluss Project is part of Public Invention, and therefore everything it does is completely open-source. This means that the STL files for the Turret Joint are reusable: http://pubinv.github.io/turret-joint/.

The electrical architecture is based around 6-actuators modules consisting of a 12V NiMH battery pack and an Arduino Mega with a custom shield. The unpopulated PCB can be ordered from Oshpark: https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/fijpozoB.

The Eagle CadSoft files for the board are: https://github.com/PubInv/gluss/tree/master/GlussPCBv0.1


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