Abstract
This work provides approaches to designing and fabricating soft fluidic elastomer robots. That is, three viable actuator morphologies composed entirely from soft silicone rubber are explored, and these morphologies are differentiated by their internal channel structure, namely, ribbed, cylindrical, and pleated. Additionally, three distinct casting-based fabrication processes are explored: lamination-based casting, retractable-pin-based casting, and lost-wax-based casting. Furthermore, two ways of fabricating a multiple DOF robot are explored: casting the complete robot as a whole and casting single degree of freedom (DOF) segments with subsequent concatenation. We experimentally validate each soft actuator morphology and fabrication process by creating multiple physical soft robot prototypes.
Highlights
The goal of this work is to describe several fabrication methods for various kinds of soft robots
Each fabrication process can be used to create actuatable soft modules; these modules can be composed in series or in parallel to create a range of different soft robot morphologies
The basic operating principle behind shape memory alloy (SMA) technology is that nickel titanium (NiTi) wire contracts under joule heating
Summary
The goal of this work is to describe several fabrication methods for various kinds of soft robots. Each fabrication method produces one or several unit-modules that can be actuated based on the soft fluidic elastomer model. Each fabrication process can be used to create actuatable soft modules; these modules can be composed in series or in parallel to create a range of different soft robot morphologies. To create fluidic elastomer robots, we must overcome many technical challenges: (i) We need methods for composing soft-unit modules to create complex morphologies suitable for robot bodies capable of autonomous locomotion and manipulation.
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