Torsional Stiffness Improvement of a Soft Pneumatic Finger Using Embedded Skeleton

Lotfiani, Amin; Zhao, Huichan; Shao, Zhufeng; Yi, Xili

doi:10.1115/1.4045227

Cited by 35 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The purpose is to determine the dependence of bending angle and contact force on the air pressure. The static structural analysis was chosen because the pneumatic actuating is a quasi‐static process as shown in the literature 14,30,31 . Much time and calculation work can be saved using the static analysis module.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft pneumatic actuator from particle reinforced silicone rubber: Simulation and experiments

Hao

Xiao

et al. 2022

J of Applied Polymer Sci

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Soft actuators are important parts of soft robotics. Particle reinforcement can effectively improve their durability, reliability and life span. However, there is a lack of such actuators. Herein, we report experiments and simulation on soft pneumatic actuators from silicone rubber embedding ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) particles. The experimental results indicate that the UHMWPE particles are uniformly distributed in silicone rubber matrix, leading to improved puncture resistance and hardness. Meanwhile, the obtained soft actuators show controllable bending angle and contact force via tuning the input air pressure. The simulation results by finite element method agree well with that from experiments in most cases, proving its applicability in the design and prediction of soft actuators composed from particle embedding rubbers. This work gives a good example to the research on soft actuators from particle embedding rubber composites, including the multifunctional actuators with conductive or magnetic particles.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft pneumatic actuator from particle reinforced silicone rubber: Simulation and experiments

Hao

Xiao

et al. 2022

J of Applied Polymer Sci

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“…Furthermore, soft material actuators can break at high levels of air pressure, which are necessary for achieving high forces. These problems can be addressed by embedding a rigid skeleton into the soft finger in order to achieve kinematic stiffness and transmission of forces while decoupling contact location and acting forces [50]. Also, changing the geometry of the PneuFlex actuators allows modulating the finger's stiffness, force, and bending profiles, for example, through thicker walls that withstand higher air pressures.…”

Section: A Ambivalence Of Soft Materials Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

RBO Hand 3: A Platform for Soft Dexterous Manipulation

2022

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In this article, we present the RBO Hand 3, a highly capable and versatile anthropomorphic soft hand based on pneumatic actuation. The RBO Hand 3 is designed to enable dexterous manipulation, to facilitate transfer of insights about human dexterity, and to serve as a robust research platform for extensive real-world experiments. It achieves these design goals by combining many degrees of actuation with intrinsic compliance, replicating relevant functioning of the human hand, and by combining robust components in a modular design. The RBO Hand 3 possesses 16 independent degrees of actuation, implemented in a dexterous opposable thumb, two-chambered fingers, an actuated palm, and the ability to spread the fingers. In this article, we derive the design objectives that are based on experimentation with the hand's predecessors, observations about human grasping, and insights about principles of dexterity. We explain in detail how the design features of the RBO Hand 3 achieve these goals and evaluate the hand by demonstrating its ability to achieve the highest possible score in the Kapandji test for thumb opposition, to realize all 33 grasp types of the comprehensive GRASP taxonomy, to replicate common human grasping strategies, and to perform dexterous in-hand manipulation.

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“…In nature, the exoskeletons of crustaceans such as lobster also have similar structures, and hybrid actuators inspired by it have been designed and studied in [8]- [10], although the authors may not be aware of the effect of this hinge-based structure on the outof-plane stiffness. In contrast, Lotfiani et al [11] embedded hinges-based skeleton during the casting of soft actuators to improve their torsional stiffness. Morrow et al [12] used 3D printed nails (fingertips) to avoid out-of-plane buckling.…”

Section: Related Work a Out-of-plane Deformationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimizing out-of-plane stiffness for soft grippers

Su¹,

Tian²,

Du³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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In this paper, we presented a data-driven framework to optimize the out-of-plane stiffness for soft grippers to achieve mechanical properties as hard-to-twist and easy-to-bend. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated in the design of a soft pneumatic bending actuator (SPBA). First, a new objective function is defined to quantitatively evaluate the out-of-plane stiffness as well as the bending performance. Then, sensitivity analysis is conducted on the parametric model of an SPBA design to determine the optimized design parameters with the help of Finite Element Analysis (FEA). To enable the computation of numerical optimization, a data-driven approach is employed to learn a cost function that directly represents the out-of-plane stiffness as a differentiable function of the design variables. A gradient-based method is used to maximize the out-of-plane stiffness of the SPBA while ensuring specific bending performance. The effectiveness of our method has been demonstrated in physical experiments taken on 3D-printed grippers.

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Torsional Stiffness Improvement of a Soft Pneumatic Finger Using Embedded Skeleton

Cited by 35 publications

References 18 publications

Soft pneumatic actuator from particle reinforced silicone rubber: Simulation and experiments

Soft pneumatic actuator from particle reinforced silicone rubber: Simulation and experiments

RBO Hand 3: A Platform for Soft Dexterous Manipulation

Optimizing out-of-plane stiffness for soft grippers

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