Author: Conor McArdle

MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) is a four-week period in January during which faculty and students are freed from the rigors of regularly scheduled classes for flexible teaching and learning and for independent study and research.

Gloria in the Edgerton Center's Electronics Mezzanine

MIT’s Independent Activities Period (IAP) is a four-week period in January during which faculty and students are freed from the rigors of regularly scheduled classes to engage in flexible teaching and learning and for independent study and research. Gloria Zhu, a second year undergrad studying Course 2 (Mechanical Engineering) made the most of this time by receiving an IAP Mini Grant to develop and engineer a robotic paintbrush, learning to quilt in Jane Halpern’s course (see below) and working on an MIT design installation with Nervous System, a generative design studio that hosted the MAD workshop “Building Complex Curvature From Flat Sheets.” It was one of the more impressive and jam-packed make-a-thons we witnessed this IAP!

The Nervous System sculpture hung above the N52 Courtyard

The seeds of the idea for her personal project — the robotic paint brush — came from Gloria’s background in art as well as mechanical engineering. “I have a background in painting, so I thought, why not try to combine the two and create a pen plotter that has extra degrees of freedom so that it can create brushstrokes.” This is not to say she hopes a robotic paint brush could one day replace the need for a painter: “I think the touch of a hand and a brushstroke in a painting is irreplaceable. That is the soul of the painting.” Her hope is that her project can be used to add a painterly aesthetic to creating forms that can’t be made as easily with the human hand. As Gloria puts it, “Creating a grid of 1000 squares, that's not really something that a human could do absolutely perfectly. I think that's where the interesting part comes in, when you combine these robotic or computational methods with physical media.”

“I haven't built anything like this before, so this is definitely going to be a big learning experience.”

Gloria's robotic paintbrush

Last year, Gloria worked with a team over IAP that built Mags, the Chess Playing Robot. She says that experience assisted her in this project, as both used a similar gantry mechanism. First was the CAD work, followed by tests of parts using FDM 3D printers, but she ultimately decided on an SLS nylon powder printer, because it creates stronger and more lightweight pieces. Her project is nearing completion.

“I think the support that the makerspaces on campus here have given me is extremely special and it is what allows me to even think about doing a project like this in the first place… I think having access to a bunch of people through these makerspaces who have experience in fields that I don't really have that much experience in makes it really easy to have an idea and then ask people, 'how do I do this?’, and then just execute it.”

Gloria with her quilting classmates