I-support soft arm for assistance tasks: a new manufacturing approach based on 3D printing and characterization

Luca Arleo,Gianni Stano,Gianluca Percoco,Matteo Cianchetti

doi:10.1007/s40964-020-00158-y

Luca Arleo, Gianni Stano + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40964-020-00158-y

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Abstract

Soft robotics is an emerging scientific field well known for being widespread employed in several applications where dexterity and safe interaction are of major importance. In particular, a very challenging scenario in which it is involved concerns bio-medical field. In the last few years, several soft robotic devices have been developed to assist elderly people in daily tasks. In this paper, the authors present a new manufacturing approach for the fabrication of I-SUPPORT, a soft arm used to help needful people during shower activities. The proposed I-SUPPORT version, based on pneumatic and cable-driven actuation, is manufactured using Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF), the most common and inexpensive Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology. The advantages offered by FFF technology compared to traditional manufacturing methods regard: (i) the possibility to increase the automation degree of the process by reducing manual tasks, (ii) the decrease of assembly operations and (iii) an improvement in terms of supply chain. Moreover, the constitutive I-SUPPORT elements have been printed separately to save time, reduce materials and optimize the waste in case of failure. Afterwards, the proposed soft robotic arm has been tested to evaluate the performances and of the chambers, module and the whole I-SUPPORT manipulator.

Highlights

Additive manufacturing (AM) is an emerging manufacturing approach composed by 7 process groups [1], but the general manufacturing idea underlying all the groups is the same: fabricate objects layer by layer
As well as in the previous version, every Additive Manufacturing (AM) I-SUPPORT module is equipped by air connectors and cable seats to combine pneumatic and cable-driven actuation: while pneumatic chambers are inflated by means of compressed air to obtain several manipulator movements, cables are pulled via DC motors to provide an antagonistic action to the fluidic actuators that results in a stiffening of the modules
The main innovative aspect of the AM I-SUPPORT concerns the elimination of the manual steps in assembling the actuators and in coupling pneumatic chambers with air connectors, as a matter of fact the pneumatic chambers have been manufactured with embedded air connectors in the same single-step printing cycle

Summary

Introduction

Additive manufacturing (AM) is an emerging manufacturing approach composed by 7 process groups [1], but the general manufacturing idea underlying all the groups is the same: fabricate objects layer by layer. The AM application fields are many, ranging from the aerospace one [2,3,4] to electronic fields [5,6,7,8,9], but at the state of art, Additive Manufacturing (AM) is still underexploited in the soft robotic field. I-SUPPORT is a soft robotic arm that can be safely used to reach target areas of the human body to assist needful people in taking shower. It is based on a hybrid actuation system: a McKibben-based flexible fluidic actuation system and a cable-driven system that are combined to achieve complex movements in the 3D space. I-SUPPORT is a modular manipulator made up of three assembled modules: the first one is called proximal module and is actuated only by cable-driven system to compensate gravitational effects; the second and third modules are called, respectively, central and distal module both based on the same hybrid actuation (cable driven and fluidic actuations)

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