A Hydraulic Soft Microhand with an Application of Live Insect Manipulation

Abstract

We have developed micro scale hydraulic/pneumatic soft grippers and demonstrated the handling of an insect. These grippers are built on Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with the soft material casting technique to form three finger-like columns, which are placed on a circular membrane. The fingers have a length of 1.5mm/2mm and a diameter of 300µm each; the distance between two fingers is 600µm of center-to-center distance. Membrane is built as a 150µm soft skin on the top of a cylindrical void. Applying a pressure difference between the interior of the void and the exterior can bend the membrane. Bending the membrane causes the motion of opening/closing of the gripper, and as a result, the three fingers can grip an object or release it. The PDMS was characterized and the experimental results were used later in Abaqus software to simulate the gripping motion. The produced force and range of deformation of the grippers were investigated by simulation and experiment. The results of the simulation agrees with the experiments. The maximum 543 µN force was measured for the microfluidic compatible microgrippers.Using this microhand gripper, the an ant was manipulated successfully without any damage. Results showed fabricated devices have great potential as a micro/bio manipulator.