Design and assessment of a flexible fish robot actuated by shape memory alloys

Coral, William; Rossi, Cláudio; Curet, Oscar; Castro, Diego

doi:10.1088/1748-3190/aad0ae

Cited by 61 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Taking inspiration from some of nature's most sophisticated creations has proven to be extremely beneficial toward the advancement of soft robotics. A few examples are soft robots inspired by snakes, [1] worms, [2] inchworms, [3] fish, [4] cephalopods, [5] and jellyfish [6] . The deformability and dexterity of these animals, and other soft-bodied species, embody the goals set for the field of soft robotics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

et al. 2020

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This review covers recent advancements in the field of bioinspired soft robotics, with a primary focus on the last 4 years (2017)(2018)(2019)(2020). The review serves as a toolbox for an interdisciplinary audience interested in the most recent bioinspired soft robotic technologies. In particular, it highlights and explores the vital components of soft robots, focusing on the enabling mechanisms and their biological inspirations. The first section discusses the materials used to fabricate soft bio inspired robots. Soft bioinspired actuation and sensing are then discussed, exploring their capabilities and implementation by researchers. Existing challenges and future potentials of bioinspired soft robots are addressed in the concluding remarks. This review provides engineers and scientists with the latest technological advancements and information needed for designing and developing the next generation of soft bioinspired robotic systems. The future applications of these robots will be grand and limitless. Materials Used for Bioinspired Sensors and ActuatorsClassical robotic systems are comprised of rigid bodies, actuators, and sensors. Unfortunately, many of these well-developed actuators and sensors are not transferable to soft bodies. Thus, researchers working in soft robotics need to reinvent actuators and sensors for soft moving bodies. Biological organisms can be an excellent inspiration for designing these soft actuators and sensors, allowing for their integration in both soft and rigid bodies. The design process of soft actuators and sensors have to be initiated with material selection and composition, for they are foundations upon which the actuators and sensors will be built around. Presently, a diversified list of materials has been used in the development of soft robotic systems. This section will cover some of the latest advancements in the last 4 years in the area of material selection and composition for the design and development of soft bioinspired actuators and sensors.During the past 4 years, researchers have produced soft bioinspired actuators and sensors using biological material such as muscle tissue, [23,24] and plant fibers; [25] carbon-based materials such as graphite and graphene oxide (GO) [26][27][28][29][30][31] and carbon nanotubes (CN); [32,33] hydrogel materials such as poly(Nisopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM), [34,35] liquid crystal elastomers (LCE), [36] dielectric elastomers (DE), [37] and ionic polymermetal composites (IPMC). [38] An overview of these materials (Figure 1), along with their underlying mechanisms, are discussed below.Biological systems can perform complex tasks with high compliance levels. This makes them a great source of inspiration for soft robotics. Indeed, the union of these fields has brought about bioinspired soft robotics, with hundreds of publications on novel research each year. This review aims to survey fundamental advances in bioinspired soft actuators and sensors with a focus on the progress between 2017 and 2020, providing a primer for the materials used i...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

et al. 2020

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“…It is equipped with a camera, which allows for the recording of aquatic life in their natural habitat [15]. Another fish was developed that utilizes SMA wires for swimming [16]. A robotic jellyfish, Robojelly, was fabricated mimicking the features of the Aurelia Aurita jellyfish species that is actuated using shape memory alloys [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Kraken: a wirelessly controlled octopus-like hybrid robot utilizing stepper motors and fishing line artificial muscle for grasping underwater

Almubarak

Schmutz

Perez

et al. 2022

Int J Intell Robot Appl

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Underwater exploration or inspection requires suitable robotic systems capable of maneuvering, manipulating objects, and operating untethered in complex environmental conditions. Traditional robots have been used to perform many tasks underwater. However, they have limited degrees of freedom, manipulation capabilities, portability, and have disruptive interactions with aquatic life. Research in soft robotics seeks to incorporate ideas of the natural flexibility and agility of aquatic species into man-made technologies to improve the current capabilities of robots using biomimetics. In this paper, we present a novel design, fabrication, and testing results of an underwater robot known as Kraken that has tentacles to mimic the arm movement of an octopus. To control the arm motion, Kraken utilizes a hybrid actuation technology consisting of stepper motors and twisted and a coiled fishing line polymer muscle (TCPFL). TCPs are becoming one of the promising actuation technologies due to their high actuation stroke, high force, light weight, and low cost. We have studied different arm stiffness configurations of the tentacles tailored to operate in different modalities (curling, twisting, and bending), to control the shape of the tentacles and grasp irregular objects delicately. Kraken uses an onboard battery, a wireless programmable joystick, a buoyancy system for depth control, all housed in a three-layer 3D printed dome-like structure. Here, we present Kraken fully functioning underwater in an Olympic-size swimming pool using its servo actuated tentacles and other test results on the TCPFL actuated tentacles in a laboratory setting. This is the first time that an embedded TCPFL actuator within elastomer has been proposed for the tentacles of an octopus-like robot along with the performance of the structures. Further, as a case study, we showed the functionality of the robot in grasping objects underwater for field robotics applications.

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“…Shape memory alloys (SMAs), due to unique characteristics such as super-elasticity and shape memory effect, are used for a range of applications, including biomedical devices (Morgan, 2004;Petrini and Migliavacca, 2011), robotics (Coral et al, 2018;Furuya and Shimada, 1991), aerospace (Hartl and Lagoudas, 2007), actuators (Benafan et al, 2019), and automotive structures (Williams and Elahinia, 2008). NiTi is the most widely used SMA due to its high energy density, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility (Hartl and Lagoudas, 2007;Morgan, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microstructure-based finite deformation modelling of super-elastic NiTi shape memory alloy considering various inelastic mechanisms

Ebrahimi¹,

Arghavani²,

Sohrabpour³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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In this study the mechanisms of transformation-induced plasticity (TRIP), detwinning-induced plasticity (DIP), and accumulation of residual martensite, are incorporated into a finite-deformation crystal plasticity model of NiTi SMA for the first time. The constitutive model is constructed at the single-crystal scale and also includes phase transformation and detwinning mechanisms. Using a proposed Helmholtz free energy, the driving forces for inelastic mechanisms are derived within the framework of thermodynamics. The constitutive model has been implemented in the Abaqus/Explicit finite-element program, using VUMAT subroutine to simulate a polycrystalline material. Considering various orientations for crystals, the effect of texture on tension-compression asymmetry is investigated. It is shown that different textures may cause stiffer, softer, or similar response in compression compared to tension. Due to the incorporation of the effect of residual martensite, the model provides accurate predictions of experimentally measured residual strain. The incorporation of the aforementioned inelastic deformation mechanisms is shown to accurately capture the key features related to cyclic loading. Finally, the effect of detwinning-induced plasticity in compressive cyclic loading of NiTi SMA is investigated. In strain-controlled cyclic compression-unloading tests DIP leads to a less negative peak stress and a more negative residual strain following several loading cycles.

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Design and assessment of a flexible fish robot actuated by shape memory alloys

Cited by 61 publications

References 35 publications

Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

Materials, Actuators, and Sensors for Soft Bioinspired Robots

Kraken: a wirelessly controlled octopus-like hybrid robot utilizing stepper motors and fishing line artificial muscle for grasping underwater

Microstructure-based finite deformation modelling of super-elastic NiTi shape memory alloy considering various inelastic mechanisms

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