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FlowIO Development Platform – the Pneumatic “Raspberry Pi” for Soft Robotics

Published: 08 May 2021 Publication History

Abstract

FlowIO is a miniature, modular, pneumatic development platform with a software toolkit for control, actuation, and sensing of soft robots and programmable materials. Five pneumatic ports and multiple fully-integrated modules to satisfy various pressure, flow, and size requirements make FlowIO suitable for most wearable and non-wearable pneumatic applications in HCI and soft robotics. FlowIO includes a software stack with APIs, Bluetooth capabilities, and web-GUI supported on all major mobile and desktop operating systems. The system is fully compatible with Arduino, JavaScript, and Google Chrome, while support for Scratch, Python, and Unity is planned for future development, making FlowIO suitable for makers from any technical background. Over a dozen people have used the FlowIO platform, ranging from high-school and college students to graduate students and researchers. In this paper I introduce the FlowIO platform, its significance to the HCI community, and preliminary efforts towards deploying FlowIO as a community-driven open-source project.

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Scratch. Retrieved Jan. 8, 2021 from https://scratch.mit.edu
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Singh, Dhawan & Sandhu, Amanpreet & Sharma Thakur, Aditi & Priyank, Nikhil. (2020). An Overview of IoT Hardware Development Platforms. International Journal on Emerging Technologies.
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Lining Yao, Ryuma Niiyama, Jifei Ou, Sean Follmer, Clark Della Silva, and Hiroshi Ishii. 2013. PneUI: pneumatically actuated soft composite materials for shape changing interfaces. In Proceedings of the 26th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST '13). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 13–22.
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Pneuduino. Retrieved Jan. 8, 2021 from http://pneuduino.org
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  • (2025)Single Pump-Valve Pneumatic Actuation With Continuous Flow Rate Control for Soft RobotsIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters10.1109/LRA.2025.353114710:3(2399-2406)Online publication date: Mar-2025
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  • (2024)Exploring the Somatic Possibilities of Shape Changing Car SeatsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661518(3354-3371)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
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cover image ACM Conferences
CHI EA '21: Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
May 2021
2965 pages
ISBN:9781450380959
DOI:10.1145/3411763
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Publication History

Published: 08 May 2021

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Author Tags

  1. Arduino
  2. Community
  3. Control Systems
  4. Creative Learning
  5. Platforms
  6. Programmable Materials
  7. Shape Change
  8. Soft Robotics
  9. Tangible User Interface (TUI)
  10. Toolkits
  11. Wearables

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Cited By

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  • (2025)Single Pump-Valve Pneumatic Actuation With Continuous Flow Rate Control for Soft RobotsIEEE Robotics and Automation Letters10.1109/LRA.2025.353114710:3(2399-2406)Online publication date: Mar-2025
  • (2024)KiPneu: Designing a Constructive Pneumatic Platform for Biomimicry Learning in STEAM EducationProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661828(441-458)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Exploring the Somatic Possibilities of Shape Changing Car SeatsProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661518(3354-3371)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)pneuCNTRL: a Pneumatic Control System for User Studies on Dynamic, Haptic InflatablesProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3635263(1-5)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
  • (2024)Info-Motion: Using the Metaphor of Plant Motion for Information Communication in Shape-changing Interface: Info-motionProceedings of the Eighteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction10.1145/3623509.3633397(1-13)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2024
  • (2024)Evaluating ActuAir: Building Occupants' Experiences of a Shape-Changing Air Quality DisplayProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642396(1-21)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)"I'm Not Touching You. It's The Robot!": Inclusion Through A Touch-Based Robot Among Mixed-Visual Ability ChildrenProceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction10.1145/3610977.3634992(511-521)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2024
  • (2024)Haptiknit: Distributed stiffness knitting for wearable hapticsScience Robotics10.1126/scirobotics.ado38879:97Online publication date: 18-Dec-2024
  • (2024)Design and Evaluation of a 3-DoF Haptic Device for Directional Shear Cues on the ForearmIEEE Transactions on Haptics10.1109/TOH.2024.336566917:3(483-495)Online publication date: Jul-2024
  • (2024)Experimenting With Soft Robotics in Education: A Systematic Literature Review From 2006 to 2022IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies10.1109/TLT.2024.337289417(1261-1278)Online publication date: 5-Mar-2024
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