Course Description

This course exemplifies the technical and ethical guidelines in designing robots for social good. The course introduces the principles, materials, design, and modeling of robotic agents for physical interactions with the environment, helping students understand the basic concepts and core technologies of robotics. The course further takes a theme-based and case-driven approach to help the students identify the key factors in designing robots for social goods and practice them in a design challenge.

Learning Outcome

At the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Conduct analysis of robotic systems in terms of technical and ethical aspects.
2. Adopt advanced technologies in designing robotic systems.
3. Demonstrate ability to align technical and ethical guidelines in designing robots for social good.

Course Instructors & Teaching Support

• Lead Instructor: Dr. Wan Fang
• Teaching Assistant: Xu Ronghan, Qiu Nuofan, Dong Yujian, Han Xudong
• Teaching Administrator: Fu Tian
• Office: Room 512, North Block, New Engineering Building

Grading

1. Form of examination: Letter Grading
2. Grading policy：
   1. Attendance  10%
   2. Assignments 20%
   3. Final Presentation 70%

Please refer to the Project Reachy Fusion for DES5002 section for further details.

Academic Integrity

• This course follows the SUSTech Code of Academic Integrity. This course’s students are expected to abide by the SUSTech Code of Academic Integrity. Any work submitted by a student in this course for academic credit will be the student’s work. Violations of the rules (e.g., cheating, copying, non-approved collaborations) will not be tolerated.

Course Materials

1. Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Well-being with Autonomous and Intelligent systems
2. Designing Robots, Designing Humans
3. Soft robotics toolkit (https://softroboticstoolkit.com/)
4. Coyle, Stephen, et al. “Bio-inspired soft robotics: Material selection, actuation, and design.” Extreme Mechanics Letters 22 (2018): 51-59.

Lecture & Lab Notes

Week	Tuesday	Friday	Assignments
01	Lecture 01: Introduction to Robots Tue Sep 06	Lecture 02: What is Social Good? Fri Sep 09	Team Formation (Sep 11 @ 23:30) Fusion 360 Registration Assignment Release
02	Lecture 03: The Rise of Robotics and AI Tue Sep 13		Fusion 360 Basics (Self-Learning)
03	Lecture 04: Robots & AI for Social Good Tue Sep 20	Workshop: Fusion 360 Basics* Fri Sep 23	Fusion 360 Basics Certificate Submit before Sep 25 @ 23:30
04	Workshop: Fusion 360 Simulation* Tue Sep 27		Fusion 360 Simulation (Self-Learning)
			Fusion 360 Simulation Certificate Submit before Oct 02 @ 23:30 Assignment Submission (Oct 07 @ 23:30)
05	Lecture 05: Mathematical Foundations Tue Oct 11	Lecture 06: Linear Regression and Classification Fri Oct 14	Fusion 360 Generative Design I (Self-Learning)
06	Lecture 07: From Logistic Regression to Neural Networks Tue Oct 18		Fusion 360 Generative Design I Certificate Submit before Oct 23 @ 23:30
07	Lecture 08: Generative Design Method Tue Oct 25	Workshop: Fusion 360 Generative Design* Fri Oct 28	Fusion 360 Generative Design II (Self-Learning)
08	Lecture 09: Convolutional Networks (CNN) Tue Nov 01		Fusion 360 Generative Design II Certificate Submit before Nov 06 @ 23:30
09	Lecture 10: Modern Architectures of DL Tue Nov 08	No Class due to Sports meeting Fri Nov 11	More details @ Workshop Notes below
10	Workshop: Middle Term Presentation Tue Nov 15		More details @ Workshop Notes below
11	Lecture 11: Soft Robotics I Tue Nov 22	Lecture 12: Soft Robotics II Fri Nov 25	More details @ Workshop Notes below
12	Workshop: Modeling and 3D Printing for Reachy Part Tue Nov 29		More details @ Workshop Notes below
13	Workshop: Assembly Reachy Part Tue Dec 06	Workshop: AI meets Design for Reachy Fri Nov Dec 09	More details @ Workshop Notes below
14	Workshop: Assembly Reachy Full Tue Dec 13		More details @ Workshop Notes below
15	Workshop: AI meets Design for Reachy Tue Dec 20	Lecture 13: AI Risk Management Fri Nov Dec 23	Poster Submission Deadline: Dec 26 @ 23:30
16	Final Review Tue Dec 27

SUSTech Calendar

Project Reachy Fusion for DES5002

In this project, we aim to adopt Reachy by Pollen Robotics as the subject to practice basic concepts in mechanical design using Autodesk Fusion 360. The overall goal is to conduct a design analysis of Reachy to evaluate its engineering characteristics against its performance, use Fusion 360 as the tool for design analysis, formulate a user manual with details instructions and conclude with design recommendations for future iterations.

[All images and videos below are reproduced from Reachy main website for educational purposes only. We hope to talk with Reachy about properly using this media content. Please contact wanf@sustech.edu.cn for more.]

Marking Structure

• (10%) Attendance
  • To be recorded randomly during each class by Teaching Assistants.
• (20%) Assignment
  • To be submitted before Oct 7th, 23:59, online.
• (20%) Project: Fusion 360 Certificate 5% * 4
  • Submit your certificate by filling out a form every two weeks.
• (20%) Project: Team Final Poster on the Design of a Reachy Part
  • Explain the design and working principle of your team’s portion of Reachy
  • Formulate and explain a step-by-step assembly for your team’s portion of Reachy
  • Explain and justify the use of Generative Design on improving a selected part from Fusion using skills learned from the four Fusion 360 courses as much as you can
• (10%) Project: Team 3D Print the Generative Design of a Reachy Part
  • Refine the Generative design and 3D print a physical model for testing with the full-size robot through a physical assembly
• (20%) Project: Team Final Poster on the Design of Reachy application for Social Good
  • Propose the use of Reachy Fusion for Social Good through design Intelligence for Reachy Fusion
• In your final presentation, presents the work the team has done including
  • formulate a project team of 4~5 students with different roles and explain your design tasks
  • get yourself fluent in using Fusion 360 for the project and in your final presentation
  • explain the design and working principle of your team’s portion of Reachy
  • formulate and explain a step-by-step assembly for your team’s portion of Reachy
  • explain and justify the use of Generative Design for Reachy Fusion
  • propose the use of Reachy Fusion for Social Good through design Intelligence for Reachy Fusion

Seven teams of design engineers are to be formulated, covering each part of Reachy, including

Roles of Design Engineers

Each team will focus on your allocated part of Reachy, with different roles of design engineers covering the following areas. When formulating your team, be sure to identify your role from the beginning.

• Design engineer 1 for producing technical drawings for each component
  • You should be generally proficient with CAD software and be open to training yourself fluently using Fusion 360. You are highly encouraged to review the recommended training videos to familiarize yourself with Fusion 360 and its usage. You should generally have an open mind or experience in manufacturing, fabrication, or prototyping. It would be great if you have already, or plan to have, experience dealing with various vendors or suppliers. Your attention to detail is most valued as a design engineer in general and regarding your contribution to the project.
• Design engineer 2 for arranging the step-by-step assembly instruction
  • You should be generally proficient with CAD software and be open to training yourself fluently using Fusion 360. You are highly encouraged to review the recommended training videos to familiarize yourself with Fusion 360 and its usage. You should feel good about visualizing designs or decomposing machines within your mind and put your skills into practice. Your logical thinking is most valued as a design engineer in general and regarding your contribution to the project.
• Design engineer 3 for analyzing the mechanical components for engineering specs
  • You should be comfortable working with modeling and numbers. Besides the recommended training videos, you are encouraged to familiarize yourself with engineering specs of things, structures, components, and designs. You should be a highly organized engineer that can put things into numbers and calculations to justify the reasoning behind a design and be generally familiar with things other than mechanical, such as electronics, materials, mechanics, control, programming, etc. Your calculations and logic play a critical role in explaining the engineering details of the design.
• Design engineer 4 for preparing the overall instruction manual
  • You should be comfortable with communication, expression, and writing. Besides the recommended training videos, you are encouraged to organize communication within your team and translate design analysis into structured logic that better explains the engineering details behind a particular design. You should be the one constantly asking the questions and organize your team’s answer into a logical expression that answers the “why” behind a design. Your overview of the big picture plays a critical role in explaining the engineering details of the design.

Notes on roles and teams

• The above description only serves as a guide to help you better position your role within the team. NOT REQUIRED.
• The role description does not restrict your involvement in the team project, and there may be more than one student per role.
• Express your interest in Team Formation here.

About Reachy by Pollen Robotics

Reachy is an expressive open-source humanoid platform programmable with Python and ROS. He is particularly good at interacting with people and manipulating objects.

Starting this year, we adopt Reachy in our teaching and learning for students at SUSTech Design and Learning Lab, with pilot projects through ME303 Mechanical Design, DES5002 Designing Robots for Social Good, and hopefully more. The shared idea is to implement Reachy as the subject of learning the various mechanical and robot design features. Both courses will share a similar structure to rebuild the Reachy with a touch of Fusion 360, as the original project was implemented using OnShape.

• For DES5002, as a selective course for graduate students, the aim is to practice the use of modern CAD systems (Fusion 360 in our case) to get yourself familiar with some of the key concepts behind the design of various standard and non-standard parts as well as the whole assembly process, using the Generative Design tool to recreate new designs by defining the engineering constraints, 3D print and assemble a new design of Reachy assembled for potential applications in Social Good.

About Fusion 360 by Autodesk

Fusion 360 is a cloud-based 3D modeling, CAD, CAM, CAE, and PCB software platform for professional product design and manufacturing.

With SUSTech School of Design, we have partnered with Autodesk to establish an Autodesk Training Center at SUSTech. A training lab with top-end Mac computers is provided by the School of Design so that our students can use and practice the use of Fusion 360 for the course. Meanwhile, through Autodesk Training Center, we offer technical and financial support for students who are willing to take the certification to become licensed practitioners of Fusion 360 in their future careers.

Workshop Notes

Week 01~08: Please refer to the table above for further instructions.

Week 09: Individual Design Review for Reachy Fusion

• Each team will be provided with a Fusion 360 folder to work with your Reachy Design. By the end of the semester, we will assemble everything into a whole design, with an overall structure as below.
  • Reachy Fusion
    • Trunk (fixed)
      • Neck
        • Head
      • Left Arm
        • Left Gripper
      • Right Arm
        • Right Gripper
• For your team’s part of Reachy,
  • Design Engineer 1: Have you identified the files and templates for producing the engineering drawings? How many parts? Bolts and nuts?
  • Design Engineer 2: Have you reviewed the assembly process step-by-step? Did you propose a sub-assembly for your design? Joint Types?
  • Design Engineer 3: Have you identified the engineering specs? Have you made a list of the spec, organized logically with technical data?
  • Design Engineer 4: Have you found all the necessary information to explain the design? Have you reviewed the templated for the manual report?

Week 10: Team Design Review for Reachy Fusion

• Based on the project introduction since the semester started and the instructions since Week 09, discuss and share with your team what you have found.
• Have each team member clarified your project’s role, task, and deliverables?
  • What remains a problem?
  • Have you talked with your team to resolve it? Have you talked with the Teaching Assistants? Do you need help from the Course Instructor?
  • Have your team reviewed the official documentation from the Reachy website and identified the positive and negative sides of the documentation?
  • Do you see a challenge you or your team may not resolve by submitting the final report?
  • What do you see would be the challenge to influence negatively to your final manual report’s quality?
• Have your team worked out an action plan to move on to the next week, with deliverables and timelines identified for each team member?

Week 11~14: Poster Preparation and 3D Printing Service

• Tips on poster preparation
  • Harvard
  • MIT
  • NYU

Week 15: Reachy Fusion Poster by Sunday Midnight

• Project Assignment: Submit your team’s Reachy Design Poster by Monday, Dec 26 @ 23:30.

Week 16: Final Presentation

• Final presentation by each team and project review by the Course Instructor and Guest Professionals.