Abstract
Abstract Significant advances in the area of additive manufacturing have provided a novel fabrication method to develop soft robots with self-powered sensors. In this paper, multi-material 3D printing is used to directly print a soft robotic finger with a triboelectric curvature sensor. The reinforced soft finger with a single-electrode triboelectric curvature sensor (RSF-S-TECS) combines the advantages of multi-material 3D printing and stretchable electrodes to achieve fast prototyping and easy system integration. The triboelectric curvature sensor is located on the top of the finger, where one active layer of the S-TECS is directly printed on the upper surface of the reinforced finger body by multi-material 3D printing, and another active layer is made of PDMS and attached to a stretchable electrode. The S-TECS behavior is evaluated for different surface configurations, applied forces and operational frequency using an automated setup. The integrated S-TECS can measure a finger curvature up to 8.2 m-1 under an ultra-low working frequency of 0.06 Hz, proving the effectiveness of the proposed S-TECS as a self-powered curvature sensor. This work presents a novel design and fabrication method of S-TECS for its potential applications in multi-material 3D printed soft robotics.
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