Reimagining a side table through joyful storytelling and material exploration


Coily,
The Lamp


A continuum robot, disguised as a lamp:
exploring movements and connections

Duration
February- May 2025 (3 months)

Skills
Mechanical Prototyping, CAD modeling (SolidWorks), IDE Prototyping, 3D printing

Materials
Springs, PLA & PETG (3D printing), fishing lines, MG996R motors, PVC tubing, LED, acrylic, screws



Visitors interacting with Coily, the Lamp at the 2026 RISD Grad Show



Our everyday environments are filled with functional objects that make our lives work, but often remain emotionally and perceptually invisible until the moment needed.  By introducing movements to static objects, animating them, we don’t just perceive objects as tools, but begin to treat them as “living entities”. This cognitive shift encourages us to interpret the objects’ “states” and “feelings”, evoking a more profound level of representation and remembrance.(Bainbridge, Dilks, & Baker, 2019)

This made me wonder:
How does our relationship with objects change when they begin to exhibit a sense of presence?
“Objects With Life” is my Master of Industrial Design thesis at Rhode Island School of Design, where I look at everyday static objects in domestic spaces and explore what happens when they begin to move. My work focuses on how motion can suggest intention, emotion, or personality, and how that changes the way we relate to objects. Through mechanical prototyping and behavioral design, I’m exploring how movement can become a form of communication, creating cues through behavior. 



Approach & Reaction

As a continuation of Twisty, the Lamp, I'm shifting my focus to the texture and quality of movement:
gestures that feel unpredictable and organic.
My goal is to move closer to truly giving the lamp "life," shifting my practice from engineering a tool that works for the user to crafting a presence the user actually wants to live with — even if only for a brief moment.

At the RISD 2026 graduation show, Coily's movement drew people in immediately. What stood out most was how many different things people projected onto it: some parents saw a bedside companion for their kids, others imagined it as a quiet presence on a desk. With objects like Coily now existing, I think there's a bigger conversation worth having: what would our homes feel like if more of the things in them had some form of life in them too?


Process


Initial Concept of Coily, the Lamp
 Most lamps have one orientation, one purpose, one place. Coily is designed to be different. It can be placed on a desk or mounted on a wall, a desk buddy or a friend in the corner of the room. You decide.

This led me to the concept of a "lamp creature": a form that isn't fixed, that can move freely on its own structure.

To make prototyping easier, I split Coily's movement into two work-like models: one for the head and tail, and one for moving across the structure.





“Head and Tail” Movements: Continuum Robotics

While standard robots rely on jointed articulation and stiff links, continuum robots move through continuous "flow" rather than fixed joints. These jointless structures typically use a flexible central backbone, often a high-tech material like Nitinol, supported by external spacer disks that guide actuation tendons.

After experimenting with different materials, I found that using clear PVC tubing as the central backbone, reinforced by external compression springs and 3D-printed spacer disks, was the easiest way to achieve the fluid, organic and organism-like movement I was looking for.

Here's how it works:  The fishing lines (actuation tendons) run outside the tubing, through the holes in the spacer disks, spaced 90 degrees apart in a circle. In its idle state, all four lines are held under tension. When one line is pulled, the opposite line is released, causing the central backbone to bend.
Movement exploring continuum robotics



I modeled individual channels into the "body" of the creature and the infrastructure it's wrapped around, so the fishing lines and LED ring wires don't get tangled or interfere with the movement. Since the wires run through the PVC tubing (the center of the backbone), they aren't affected no matter how the backbone bends.
3D-printed body with fishing lines and wiring routed through


Working prototype of the "upper body" movement



more details coming soon...