{"id":3684,"date":"2024-07-11T19:13:15","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T19:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/?post_type=profiles&#038;p=3684"},"modified":"2025-12-09T12:30:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T17:30:20","slug":"matthew-fernandez","status":"publish","type":"profiles","link":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/profiles\/matthew-fernandez\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew Fernandez"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1443\" height=\"1443\" src=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/FernandezMatthew.jpg\" alt=\"Matthew, headshot\" class=\"wp-image-3762\" style=\"width:200px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/FernandezMatthew.jpg 1443w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/FernandezMatthew-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/FernandezMatthew-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/FernandezMatthew-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2024\/08\/FernandezMatthew-768x768.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1443px) 100vw, 1443px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><strong>MIT Department: <\/strong>Mechanical Engineering<br><strong>Faculty Mentor: <\/strong>Prof. Kaitlyn Becker<br><strong>Research Supervisor: <\/strong>Samuel Gollob<br><strong>Undergraduate Institution:<\/strong> Georgia Institute of Technology<br><strong>Hometown:<\/strong> Tampa, Florida<br><strong>Website<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/fernandez-matt\">LinkedIn<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Biography<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Matthew Fernandez is a rising senior Mechanical Engineering student from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His passions lie in bio-inspired and multi-modal robotics targeting extreme environment locomotion and manipulation capabilities. Previously, Matthew has experience developing marine robotic systems for the Arctic and Antarctica and moved on to develop Martian robotic systems at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He currently engages in research at Georgia Tech\u2019s Complex Rheology and Biomechanics lab under Prof. Daniel Goldman, where he has worked on developing mechanically intelligent limbed and limbless systems capable of open-loop locomotion through complex obstacles. Currently, he leads his own project regarding limbless locomotion in cluttered underwater environments, as well as amphibious robotic capability. After his undergraduate degree, Matthew plans to pursue graduate school in these fields of bio-inspired and multi-modal works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Design of a Propellant-Powered Pneumatic Source for Soft Robots<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Matthew Fernandez<sup>1,<\/sup> Samuel Gollob<sup>2<\/sup> and Kaitlyn Becker<sup>2<\/sup><\/strong><br><sup>1<\/sup>Department of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology<br><sup>2<\/sup>Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Soft robotics has opened a new space of actuation and control possibilities, both in manipulation and locomotion. Despite this flexibility, these actuation methods often turn out to be the bottleneck in the development of energy-efficient and lightweight untethered soft-robotic systems. Existing soft actuation methods often require pumps or compressors resulting in significant sacrifice in power consumption, mass, and volume. This has resulted in the pursuit towards monopropellant systems, in this case the catalyzed decomposition of hydrogen peroxide to rapidly produce high-pressure oxygen, despite its difficulty in control and packaging. In this work, we propose a compact actuator using a combination of relative pressures from the reacted gas and the elasticity of a secondary fuel reservoir to create a low-energy refuel system, all precisely controlled by a small solenoid. This pressure system allows the absence of a pump, granting a uniquely energy-dense actuator while maintaining low mass. We have characterized the control of this actuation strategy, quantifying the energy benefit in this elastic membrane refuel system. Additionally, we have adapted this actuator to multiple robotic platforms, both locomotion and manipulation, proving its broad range of efficacy. This has resulted in a compact, lightweight actuator applicable to most any soft robotic platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":3762,"template":"","profile_category":[22],"class_list":["post-3684","profiles","type-profiles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profile_category-2024-interns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/3684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profiles"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/3684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4899,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/3684\/revisions\/4899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profile_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_category?post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}