Pneumatic soft actuators are a highly researched topic in soft robotics. The paper discusses the design and analysis of an Asymmetric Flexible Pneumatic bellow Actuator (AFPBA). This kind of actuator is cheap, easy to produce, reliable and durable. Soft grippers commonly use this actuator to pick fragile objects. The objective is to design an actuator which produced the maximum bending and study the effect of external corrugation and eccentricity on the actuator to select the optimal design. Optimum eccentricity has been determined by two factors – bending and stability. The model has also been tested at different pressures. Nitrile rubber was used as the material to design and analyze the actuator. Finite element analysis was employed to conduct the structural analysis of the actuator. In conclusion, an actuator with a semicircular cross-section and semi-circular corrugation for the bellows gave the maximum bending. For the particular design selected with an eccentricity of 0.87 provided the maximum bending of 30.764 degrees at working pressure (5 bar).

The paper focuses on the design, analysis and control of an automated 3 DOF SCARA robotic manipulator with an end effector made of asymmetric flexible pneumatic bellow actuator (AFPBA). The manipulator is made for use in the poultry industry and therefore tested in its ability to detect, pick and place eggs. The links of the manipulator are made using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and the end effector is made using nitrile rubber. A neural network derived from the VGG-16 and YOLO architecture is then implemented to detect and localize eggs. The predicted values were then used to calculate the inverse kinematics of the manipulator.

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Soft robotics is replacing conventional robots in fields requiring interaction with fragile objects. Namakkal district of Tamil Nadu is responsible for over 90% of egg exports in India. Most of the eggs are processed and palletized manually which causes a lot of money on human labor. This paper discusses the design of a SCARA robot which uses asymmetric flexible pneumatic bellow actuator (AFPBA) to palletize the eggs to reduce the processing time and human labor. The design, analysis, manufacturing and testing details have been provided. The manufactured prototype was able to successfully lift 200 grams without slippage.