RoboLoom - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University
RoboLoom
Project Head: Samantha Speer

RoboLoom is a project to design, build, and deploy a robotic fully jacquard loom that has software interfaces to aid in teaching matrix math through weaving.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. RoboLoom aims to explore this and design was to bring weaving and matrix math together in new and interesting ways.

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