Abstract
Abstract. This article presents the design and preliminary evaluation of a novel continuum robot actuated by two extendable balloons. Extendable balloons are utilized as the actuation mechanism of the robot, and they are attached to the tip from their slack sections. These balloons can extend very much in length without having a significant change in diameter. Employing two balloons in an axially extendable, radially rigid flexible shaft, radial strain becomes constricted, allowing high elongation. As inflated, the balloons apply a force on the wall of the tip, pushing it forward. This force enables the robot to move forward. The air is supplied to the balloons by an air compressor and its flow rate to each balloon can be independently controlled. Changing the air volumes differently in each balloon, when they are radially constricted, orients the robot, allowing navigation. Elongation and force generation capabilities and pressure data are measured for different balloons during inflation and deflation. Afterward, the robot is subjected to open field and maze-like environment navigation tests. The contribution of this study is the introduction of a novel actuation mechanism for soft robots to have extreme elongation (2000 %) in order to be navigated in substantially long and narrow environments.
Highlights
In order to achieve a high level of precision, rigidity has long been an optimization criterion for robot designers (Grossard et al, 2013)
The idea of designing and developing a robot that can be guided through unstructured, substantially-long and narrow environments to perform exploratory operations such as for natural disaster relief, or pipe inspection (Majidi, 2014) was the motivation that led to this research
We have proposed a novel continuum robot actuated by two extendable balloons and preliminary characterization experiments were performed
Summary
In order to achieve a high level of precision, rigidity has long been an optimization criterion for robot designers (Grossard et al, 2013). Rigid-link robots dominate the industry, they cannot be of any help for some cases of diagnostic, pipe inspection, or medical applications, where a videoscope is used to access remote locations through narrow holes for visualization In such operations, flexibility of the manipulators would help greatly to reach difficult-to-access sites and complete the task with high dexterity (Rus and Tolley, 2015). Backbones bend continuously along their length via elastic deformation and produce motion by generating smooth curves (Robinson and Davies, 1999) They are able to take any shape in the working environment. An advantage of having a deformable low-stiffness backbone is that these types of robots generate little resistance to compressive forces They can conform to obstacles (Chirikjian and Burdick, 1990). This fact enables the robots to work in unstructured environments, where a robot cannot rely on a detailed and accurate model of the environment (Katz et al, 2008) and may run into unexpected obsta-
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