RoboLoom: Teach math through weaving
RoboLoom is a robotic Jacquard loom kit designed to facilitate interdisciplinary learning in engineering, mathematics, and art through collaborative assembly and use. It allows students to work together on building and operating the loom, fostering teamwork while teaching key concepts in weaving, engineering, and linear algebra. Most people don’t know how closely related computers, matrices, and the craft of weaving are, but weaving patterns and early loom designs inspired some of early computing and matrices. For today’s looms and computers there is still a connection. Matrices can describe how a loom is threaded, and what actions are taken each time step while weaving. These matrices can then be multiplied together resulting in a cloth’s pattern. Designing and optimizing these matrices can be explored as a computational problem in a crafting framework. In addition, the woven cloth itself can be engineered using mathematical properties of the matrix representation of the cloth. These physical properties can predict how the cloth can be used and the strength it will have. Furthermore, advancements in engineering have been inspired by looms as they’ve been engineered to hold tension and become more autonomous machines. RoboLoom aims to explore these interrelated concepts and bring weaving, matrix math, and engineering together in the classroom in new and interesting ways.
Contact
- Samantha Speer snspeer@andrew.cmu.edu
- Will Scott wscott2@andrew.cmu.edu
Our dedicated website at: https://sites.google.com/view/roboloom/
