A Twisted String Actuator-Driven Soft Robotic Manipulator

Bombara, David; Coulter, Ryan; Konda, Revanth; Zhang, Jun

doi:10.1016/j.ifacol.2021.11.166

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…For example, SMTAs have been utilized to drive high performance soft grippers and to realize tunable stiffness [5], [29]- [32]. However, due to their low force outputs, SMTAs requires high-torque motors or high-reduction gearboxes [20], [25]. High-torque motors may be bulky and heavy, whereas high-reduction gearboxes would significantly decrease the actuation speed.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The design of the soft gripper was inspired by the soft, TSA-driven manipulator presented in [25]. The components of the soft gripper were first designed using SolidWorks™.…”

Section: A Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The tendons used in this work were 0.7-mm-diameter ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) strings. UHMWPE is commonly used in TSAs [16], [25], [49]. The diameter of 0.7 mm provided the correct balance between force output and contraction speed: a larger diameter would increase the linear contraction speed, but decrease the actuator's maximum force output [16].…”

Section: B Fabricationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…TSAs have been widely employed in multiple robotic applications, such as tensegrity robots, robotic fingers, robotic hands, and exoskeletons [17], [21]- [23], not only as driving mechanisms but also to achieve variable stiffness [24]. However, they have only been used in one other soft robot so far [25]. This is likely because TSAs require motors, which are difficult to be incorporated into soft structures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the strings used in traditional TSAs are not largely stretchable, their flexibility could be very useful in soft robots. The advantages of employing TSAs to drive soft robotic structures have been explored in our previous work [25], [28], in which the design and performance of a TSA-driven soft robotic manipulator were presented. Actuating soft robotic grippers with TSAs could present unique advantages due to TSAs' inherent properties, and could result in the realization of large DOF-robotic structures while maintaining system compactness.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Anthropomorphic Twisted String-Actuated Soft Robotic Gripper with Tendon-Based Stiffening

Bombara¹,

Konda²,

Swanbeck³

et al. 2022

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Realizing high-performance soft robotic grippers is challenging because of the inherent limitations of the soft actuators and artificial muscles that drive them. Although existing soft robotic grippers exhibit acceptable performance, their design and fabrication are still an open problem. This paper explores twisted string actuators (TSAs) to drive a soft robotic gripper. TSAs have been widely used in numerous robotic applications, but their inclusion in soft robots has been limited. The proposed design of the gripper was inspired by the human hand, with four fingers and a thumb. Tunable stiffness was implemented in the fingers by using antagonistic TSAs. The fingers' bending angles, actuation speed, blocked force output, and stiffness tuning were experimentally characterized. The gripper was able to achieve a score of 6 on the Kapandji test, and was also to achieve 31 of the 33 grasps of the Feix GRASP taxonomy. A comparison study revealed that the proposed gripper exhibited equivalent or superior performance compared to other similar grippers.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The design of the soft gripper was inspired by the soft, TSA-driven manipulator presented in [25]. The components of the soft gripper were first designed using SolidWorks™.…”

Section: A Designmentioning

confidence: 99%