Abstract
This article proposes a novel soft pneumatic actuator inspired by the segmented structure of earthworms. The actuator adopts a new structure of free bottom to eliminate the constraint of the bottom and enlarge the bending capacity of the actuator. Through simulation, it is found that the new actuator improves the bending angle by 20% and output force by 40% compared with traditional actuator. Moreover, key parameters of the actuator are analyzed to acquire their effect on bending angle and bending linearity. A guideline for the design and optimization of the actuator is proposed. To validate the simulation results, we build up a test platform to test bending angle and output force of the actuators, the results shows that errors between the simulation and the test remained in the limit of about 10%. Finally, a three-jaw soft gripper is fabricated and its grasping strategy is studied. The quantitative analysis shows its excellent adaptability and load capacity.
Highlights
Flexibility of animal organs such as the elephant trunks and earthworms inspires the development of soft robot
Based on the drive mode, soft robots can be categorized into various types including rope driven soft robot [1], pneumatic driven soft robot [2]–[4], shape memory alloy driven soft robot [5], [6], shape memory polymer driven soft robot [7], [8] and chemical energy driven soft robot [9], [10]
We proposes the free bottom actuator (FBA) to overcome this problem
Summary
FEI YANG 1, QI RUAN1, YIMING MAN2, ZHIJIE XIE1, HONGHAO YUE 1, BING LI 3, (Senior Member, IEEE), AND RONGQIANG LIU 1, (Member, IEEE).
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