A Miniature Soft Robotic Manipulator Based on Novel Fabrication Methods

Sun, Yi; Song, Shuang; Liang, Xinquan; Ren, Hongliang

doi:10.1109/lra.2016.2521889

Cited by 87 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…This discipline is steeply growing, and from the seminal review paper of Trivedi et al (2008) the field was subject to several evolutions; to date, the most recent review paper on soft robotics (Rus and Tolley, 2015) identifies four possible application domains for soft robots: locomotion, manipulation, wearable, and soft cyborgs. This review agrees with our survey on the most relevant domains influenced by soft robotic, which identified three niches: (1) the terrestrial locomotion, where a great number of bio-inspired (Belanger et al, 2000;Mezoff et al, 2004;Lin et al, 2013;Umedachi et al, 2016) (inspired by worms, caterpillars, and their gaits) (Jayaram and Full, 2016) (insects) (Chrispell et al, 2013;Cicconofri and DeSimone, 2015) (snakes) or build from scratch robots (Kim et al, 2014;Li et al, 2016) are under development; (2) the underwater locomotion (Fiazza et al, 2010), mainly inspired by fishes (Clark et al, 2015), turtles (Song et al, 2016), crabs (Calisti et al, 2016), chephalopods (Arienti et al, 2013;Cianchetti et al, 2015), rays (Urai et al, 2015), or other aquatic animals; and (3) manipulation, either at the level of grippers (Manti et al, 2015;Fakhari et al, 2016;Shintake et al, 2016), arms Elango and Faudzi, 2015;Katzschmann et al, 2015;Deashapriya et al, 2016;Sun et al, 2016), or other devices (Deng et al, 2016).…”

Section: Scenarios Definitionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Contest-Driven Soft-Robotics Boost: The RoboSoft Grand Challenge

et al. 2016

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This paper reports the design process, the implementation, and the results of a novel robotic contest addressing soft robots, named RoboSoft Grand Challenge. Applicationoriented tasks were proposed in three different scenarios where soft robotics is particularly lively: manipulation, terrestrial, and underwater locomotion. Starting from about 60 expressions of interest submitted by international teams distributed across the world, 19 robots were eventually selected to participate in the challenge in two of the initially proposed scenarios, i.e., manipulation and terrestrial locomotion. Results highlight both the effectiveness and limitations of state of the art soft robots with respect to the selected tasks. The paper will also focus on some of the advantages and disadvantages of contests as technology-steering mechanisms, including what we called "reductionist design," a phenomenon in which simplistic solutions are devised to purposely tackle the proposed tasks, possibly hindering more general and desired technological advancements.

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Section: Scenarios Definitionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Contest-Driven Soft-Robotics Boost: The RoboSoft Grand Challenge

et al. 2016

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“…Very thin pipes are more difficult to find or fabricate and the pressure drops become significant as the scale drops below the millimeter diameter scale. Fabrication of miniaturized devices present an engineering challenge due to the need to include multiple materials and structures to realize the desired behavior, such as containment fibers to cause elongation or bending, or in the case of inextensible materials to create anisotropic stiffness. Geometrical asymmetries introduced through non‐concentric molds could represent a simple but viable solution, as reported in ref …”

Section: Surgical Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft Robotics: Review of Fluid‐Driven Intrinsically Soft Devices; Manufacturing, Sensing, Control, and Applications in Human‐Robot Interaction

et al. 2017

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The emerging field of soft robotics makes use of many classes of materials including metals, low glass transition temperature (Tg) plastics, and high Tg elastomers. Dependent on the specific design, all of these materials may result in extrinsically soft robots. Organic elastomers, however, have elastic moduli ranging from tens of megapascals down to kilopascals; robots composed of such materials are intrinsically soft À they are always compliant independent of their shape. This class of soft machines has been used to reduce control complexity and manufacturing cost of robots, while enabling sophisticated and novel functionalities often in direct contact with humans. This review focuses on a particular type of intrinsically soft, elastomeric robot À those powered via fluidic pressurization.

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“…For example, mechanical arm, which is composed of manipulator, gripper, and joint, may injure people while working. With the development of fabrication technology of soft robots, entirely flexible manipulator and gripper have been achieved. However, none of the existing soft actuators are appropriate for entirely flexible joint.…”

Section: Combinations Of V‐sptas To Achieve Various Motionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently developed prototypes used three independent pneumatic channels along the longitudinal direction of the manipulator to generate movement in three dimensions. This limited the bending angle or reduced the output force of the end effector . When an object is grabbed, our hands adjust the opening to adapt the shape of the object.…”

Section: Combinations Of V‐sptas To Achieve Various Motionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vacuum‐Powered Soft Pneumatic Twisting Actuators to Empower New Capabilities for Soft Robots

Zhang

Chen

Zou

et al. 2018

Adv Materials Technologies

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working. With the development of fabrication technology of soft robots, entirely flexible manipulator [9][10][11][12][13] and gripper [14][15][16][17][18] have been achieved. However, none of the existing soft actuators are appropriate for entirely flexible joint. Therefore, flexible twisting actuators with diverse functions and easy manufacture are needed to be designed.Pressurized air has been widely used as the main power source for soft actuators to achieve twisting or rotary motion, although an overpressure risk needs to be carefully considered in actuator design. [19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Lee et al., [19] Morin et al., [20] and Lazarus et al. [21] designed a range of twisting actuators powered by positive pressure with twisting angles of less than 62°. To improve performance, Connolly et al. [22] developed soft fluidic actuators reinforced by fibers, which can rotate up to 180°. They combined the actuators with different fiber angles in series to create a wormlike soft robot that could navigate through a pipe and insert prongs into holes. However, the actuator length needs to be increased to achieve larger twisting angles, which limits their application as flexible joints, since such structure requires a short length. Gorissen et al. [23] proposed a new soft actuator based on angled pneumatic balloon actuator arrays that can perform a large twisting angle of 71° without compromising an increase of actuator length. Four actuators were used to create a two degrees of freedom (DoFs) tilting mirror platform, which could turn at angles of ±25° and ± 29°. However, the actuator is not suitable for the development of soft robots due to its inherent sheet-like structure. A continuous rotary actuator driven by pressurized air was proposed by Gong et al. [24] who designed a pneumatic rotary actuator based on peristaltic motion of elastomeric materials. The actuator consisted of an inflatable stator that was paired with a rotor. A four-wheeled vehicle, which used a combination of the actuators, was prototyped and achieved a speed of 37 mm s −1 . The vehicle could travel over irregular terrains and survive high mechanical impact loads. The actuator was completely soft, but the cyclic fatigue behavior of the elastomeric bladders and delamination at the bonded interfaces were not clear and requires further investigation.Recently, pioneering studies employed the use of vacuum power to achieve torsional motion. [26][27][28] Yang et al. [26] exploited an elastomeric structure which contained a number of elastic beams and interconnected deformable cavities sealed within a Vacuum-powered soft pneumatic actuators (V-SPAs) are a promising enabling technology for a wide range of emerging applications, including artificial muscles, programmable locomotion, and flexible grippers. This is due to their flexible deformation, clean power supply, safe interaction with users, and high reliability compared with alternative actuators. A new vacuum-powered soft pneumatic twisting actuator (V-SPTA) is designed, which has a single seamless...

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A Miniature Soft Robotic Manipulator Based on Novel Fabrication Methods

Cited by 87 publications

References 28 publications

Contest-Driven Soft-Robotics Boost: The RoboSoft Grand Challenge

Contest-Driven Soft-Robotics Boost: The RoboSoft Grand Challenge

Soft Robotics: Review of Fluid‐Driven Intrinsically Soft Devices; Manufacturing, Sensing, Control, and Applications in Human‐Robot Interaction

Vacuum‐Powered Soft Pneumatic Twisting Actuators to Empower New Capabilities for Soft Robots

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