Abstract
A capsule-type soft pneumatic actuator (CTSPA) was molded with hyperelastic material (latex) and subjected to deformations. In order to provide a large thrust force and limit the direction of expansion and contraction, the actuator was covered by fiber materials and driven by compressed air. Soft pneumatic actuator, belonging to flexible drive, showed nonlinear characteristics. In this study, with theoretical and experimental methods, a static mathematical model of CTSPA was established to analyze the relationship between the inflation pressure, driving force, and deformations. Furthermore, we experimentally explored the response characteristics of CTSPA by using a unit step function. The hysteresis was significantly affected by air pressure, loading size, and effective contact area of the actuator. Finally, the actuator realized a compatible position tracking performance of 1 Hz and a low average tracking error of 0.3°. The study provides a basis for studying the control methods and state maintenance of flexible drive systems.
Highlights
Soft robots, made with soft or flexible materials, mimic the material, mechanics, morphological structure, and motion characteristics of soft organisms in nature
Galloway et al [5] built a fluid channel in the robot body made with hyperelastic materials and embedded in the fiberreinforced layer to control the bending of the soft robot by controlling the volume of the fluid in the channel
Pneumatic artificial muscle is a kind of flexible gasdriven driving device and has been widely applied in many fields, especially medical, magnetic, limited space, and other applications, to provide a strong contraction pull force. e static mathematical model of pneumatic artificial muscle is the basis for the study and application of Pneumatic Muscle Actuator (PMA) drives
Summary
Made with soft or flexible materials, mimic the material, mechanics, morphological structure, and motion characteristics of soft organisms in nature. It has similar mechanical properties to biological muscles, such as high power/mass ratio and high power/volume ratio, and has been applied in a variety of robots providing driving force. Since it can contract only in one direction, it needs to be used in pairs to generate two-way forces or motions, and its contraction ratio is generally 20%∼40% [3]. Pneumatic artificial muscle is a kind of flexible gasdriven driving device and has been widely applied in many fields, especially medical, magnetic, limited space, and other applications, to provide a strong contraction pull force. Lee and Rodrigue [19] proposed an origami-based vacuum pneumatic artificial muscle with a large contraction ratio to produce large forces and developed a quasistatic analytical model to accurately predict the behavior of the actuator. Capsule-type balloon (made of latex) is a good choice due to its large expansion ratio and output thrust. erefore, in this paper, the latex balloon covered with the fiber material as the structure of the soft pneumatic actuator and the mechanical characteristics were explored
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