Workshops

This workshop is a hands-on learning experience about the artistic side of recycled paper and its creation. Participants will learn about: the colorful history of paper which has spanned through the worlds cultures, its origins, the technological advancements and its artistic appeal. I’ll introduce the basics of making paper. Paper has many different applications in architecture, art and interior design, ... Read More

Swarm engineering is a discipline which envisions the creation of engineered solutions to problems requiring multiple interacting agents. The field is vast, though historically it has focused on robotics and computer programming. It has applications in government, sociology, economics, business, and tangential applications to traditional science and theoretical research. Presentations given during part of the workshop will describe some of ... Read More

While swarms that execute decisions are well known in the swarm community, swarms that exhibit this capability a priori have never before been achieved. We demonstrate a methodology, based on the Hamiltonian method of swarm design, that enables the design and implementation of swarms that exhibit decision-making capability. We develop the theoretical structure of the method and apply it to ... Read More

Swarm engineering, which uses minimally intelligent individual agents to solve problems, aims to solve real world problems that other technologies cannot solve as efficiently. Our group addresses the swarm decision problem, in which a swarm collectively makes a decision, using physical robots to test out theories on how to solve the problem. We have developed a robot platform called the ... Read More

Today’s global population is constantly challenged by environmental pollutants, specifically in the aspects of neurological stress and aging. One such pollutant is phenol, a chemical found in low levels in air and soil as a result of industrial waste. While exposure to phenol in large quantities over a short period induces organ damage in humans, the consequences of continuous exposure ... Read More

Entrochemical systems were developed during the late 2000's and early 2010's. Generally speaking, the systems involve a spontaneous heat pump stage that moves heat from a lower temperature stage to a higher temperature stage. This heat can be used to drive many thermal processes. A second stage utilizes environmental thermal energy to "recharge" the fluids in the entrochemical system once ... Read More

The entrochemical system consists of an entrochemical device, which spontaneously generates and maintains a thermal gradient through a spontaneous entropic and thermal process. The system can be operated continually when enhanced with a solar chimney, which re-concentrates the solution used in the entrochemical device. The thermal gradient can then be applied in a distiller, daisy chained to create a large ... Read More

The entrochemical system consists of an entrochemical device, which spontaneously generates and maintains a thermal gradient through a spontaneous entropic and thermal process. The system can be operated continually when enhanced with a solar chimney, which re-concentrates the solution used in the entrochemical device. The thermal gradient can then be applied in a distiller, daisy chained to create a large ... Read More

The entrochemical system consists of an entrochemical device, which spontaneously generates and maintains a thermal gradient through a spontaneous entropic and thermal process. The solar chimney generates airflow over a draw solution in a desiccator, evaporating water, leaving the remaining concentrated solution, and is therefore the main energy source driving the entrochemical system. In this study, we present the results ... Read More

The entrochemical system consists of an entrochemical device, which spontaneously generates and maintains a thermal gradient through a spontaneous entropic and thermal process. The system can be operated continually when enhanced with a solar chimney, which re-concentrates the solution used in the entrochemical device. This study compares the performances of two different designs of entrochemical distillers. The first design is ... Read More