Research on energy consumption of fiber-reinforced fluidic soft actuators

Abstract

Fluidic soft actuators have drawn more and more research interest in recent years, but it is not clear on their behaviors of dynamical energy consumption, which is critical to power system design. To solve this problem, this work develops an analytical model of required energy including elastic potential energy and dissipated energy for fiber-reinforced fluidic soft actuators based on the theory of viscoelasticity. Since the parameters of soft material are difficult to obtain, the key parameters in the model are identified by experimental data and genetic algorithm. To verify the general performance of the developed model, a series of fiber-reinforced fluidic soft actuators with different dimensions are fabricated and tested. The average errors of the experimental value and the predicted value are equal to 0.045 J, 0.003 J, 0.001 J, and 0.011 J, which are less than 15% of the nominal values. The experimental results show that the model can capture the energy characteristics of the soft actuators under various operating conditions with expected accuracy. Finally, the energy consumption of a robotic arm composed of three soft actuators is also evaluated. This work can promote the understanding on the energy requirement of soft robots and provide further reference to the optimization design of power system.

Shape memory meta-laminar jamming actuators fabricated by 4D printing

“…In general, soft pneumatic actuators are relatively low power consumption devices, as they rely on the stored energy in compressed air to generate motion, rather than relying on electrical or mechanical power sources [43][44][45][46].…”

“…Holding the actuator in a required position consumes energy and power continuously. Previous works required constant pressure to hold the actuator in the required position for a long time [43,44]. These research works showed how much energy and power were consumed to activate the actuators.…”

“…In general, soft pneumatic actuators are relatively low power consumption devices, as they rely on the stored energy in compressed air to generate motion, rather than relying on electrical or mechanical power sources. [43][44][45][46] Holding an actuator in a desired position consumes energy and power continuously. Previous works showed that a constant pressure is required to hold an actuator in the desired position for a long time.…”

“…Previous works showed that a constant pressure is required to hold an actuator in the desired position for a long time. 43,44 These research works showed how much energy and power were consumed to activate the actuators. However, in this work, after activation and cooling of the MLJ actuator, no additional power is consumed to hold the actuator in the target position for long-term tasks due to the SME of the core structure.…”

Dynamic response prediction of hydraulic soft robotic arms based on LSTM neural network

“…The parts made of silicone rubber are fabricated by casting method, and the chambers and the silicone tubes inserted at the top are spliced using silicone adhesive (Ease Release 200, Smooth-on, USA). 36,37 The design length of the single-section soft robotic arm is 130 mm and the outer diameter is 25 mm.…”