{"id":72,"date":"2024-09-27T10:59:21","date_gmt":"2024-09-27T14:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/?page_id=72"},"modified":"2024-11-18T14:20:13","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T19:20:13","slug":"self-driving-lab","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/ai\/self-driving-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"A Self-Driving Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"

An autonomous robot in BU\u2019s College of Engineering is teaching itself to create the world\u2019s most shock-absorbent shape. <\/strong>Meet MAMA BEAR<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> If it succeeds, the product could revolutionize helmets, packaging, car bumpers, and more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

MAMA BEAR is short for Mechanics of Additively Manufactured Architectures Bayesian Experimental Autonomous Researcher. For the past three years, MAMA BEAR has been repeatedly creating and crushing 3D-printed plastic structures and recording resulting details in a vast database.<\/p>\n

First conceptualized in 2018 by Keith Brown<\/strong><\/a>, an associate professor of mechanical engineering, and his team in the KABlab<\/strong><\/a>, MAMA BEAR has been running continuously since 2021. Learning as it goes, the robot creates a structure, compresses it, and measures how much energy it absorbs and how its shape changes\u2014these determine what\u2019s known as its mechanical energy-absorption efficiency. Each iteration is a tweaked version of its predecessor, the design and dimensions adjusted by the robot\u2019s computer algorithm based on all past experiments. To date, this \u201cself-driving lab\u201d has filled dozens of boxes with more than 25,000 shapes.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Engineer Keith Brown<\/strong> and his team are working to create the perfect shock-absorbent material with the help of machine learning.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s all about finding the sweet spot. The ideal structure can\u2019t be so strong that it damages whatever it\u2019s supposed to protect, but it should be strong enough to absorb impact.<\/p>\n

Before MAMA BEAR, the best structure anyone observed was about 71% efficient at absorbing energy, says Brown. But one January afternoon in 2023, Brown and his team saw their robot hit 75% efficiency, breaking the known record. The results were published in Nature Communications<\/em> in May 2024 and have already attracted the attention of the US military as it seeks to design new helmet padding for soldiers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re excited that there\u2019s so much mechanical data here and we\u2019re using this to learn lessons about design more generally,\u201d Brown says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An autonomous robot in BU\u2019s College of Engineering is teaching itself to create the world\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1859,"featured_media":0,"parent":68,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"bu-landing","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/72"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1859"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":717,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/72\/revisions\/717"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ar.bu.edu\/2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}