Towards a Self-contained Soft Robotic Fish: On-Board Pressure Generation and Embedded Electro-permanent Magnet Valves

Marchese, Andrew D.; Önal, Çağdaş D.; Rus, Daniela

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-00065-7_4

Cited by 31 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Some fluid-powered soft machines show promising capabilities such as walking 10 and leaping 11 but are primarily driven by cumbersome external hardware limiting their practical use. Conversely, there are instances of self-contained fluidic soft robots; [12][13][14] however, because of the constraints imposed by bringing all supporting hardware onboard, performance of these robots is severely limited when compared with rigid-bodied robots. The primary technical challenge addressed by this work is the advancement of soft-bodied robots to simultaneously be capable of rapidly achieving continuum-body motion and be selfcontained.…”

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confidence: 99%

Autonomous Soft Robotic Fish Capable of Escape Maneuvers Using Fluidic Elastomer Actuators

2014

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In this work we describe an autonomous soft-bodied robot that is both self-contained and capable of rapid, continuum-body motion. We detail the design, modeling, fabrication, and control of the soft fish, focusing on enabling the robot to perform rapid escape responses. The robot employs a compliant body with embedded actuators emulating the slender anatomical form of a fish. In addition, the robot has a novel fluidic actuation system that drives body motion and has all the subsystems of a traditional robot onboard: power, actuation, processing, and control. At the core of the fish's soft body is an array of fluidic elastomer actuators. We design the fish to emulate escape responses in addition to forward swimming because such maneuvers require rapid body accelerations and continuum-body motion. These maneuvers showcase the performance capabilities of this self-contained robot. The kinematics and controllability of the robot during simulated escape response maneuvers are analyzed and compared with studies on biological fish. We show that during escape responses, the soft-bodied robot has similar input-output relationships to those observed in biological fish. The major implication of this work is that we show soft robots can be both self-contained and capable of rapid body motion.

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confidence: 99%

Autonomous Soft Robotic Fish Capable of Escape Maneuvers Using Fluidic Elastomer Actuators

2014

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“…Our autonomous soft robotic snake uses an on-board miniature compressor to convert electrical energy to mechanical energy 13, 15 and we have developed a soft robotic fish that uses on-board compressed air cylinders. 26 Both of the existing mechanical power systems provide solutions to achieve self-contained fluidic mobile robots, but they lack in a number of aspects limiting their use for portable and everyday use. Miniature compressors are noisy and use valuable electrical energy; and cylinders in useful form factors do not offer longevity.…”

Section: Energy: Portable Pneumatic Batterymentioning

confidence: 99%

System-level challenges in pressure-operated soft robotics

Önal

2016

SPIE Proceedings

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Last decade witnessed the revival of fluidic soft actuation. As pressure-operated soft robotics becomes more popular with promising recent results, system integration remains an outstanding challenge. Inspired greatly by biology, we envision future robotic systems to embrace mechanical compliance with bodies composed of soft and hard components as well as electronic and sensing sub-systems, such that robot maintenance starts to resemble surgery. In this vision, portable energy sources and driving infrastructure plays a key role to offer autonomous many-DoF soft actuation. On the other hand, while offering many advantages in safety and adaptability to interact with unstructured environments, objects, and human bodies, mechanical compliance also violates many inherent assumptions in traditional rigid-body robotics. Thus, a complete soft robotic system requires new approaches to utilize proprioception that provides rich sensory information while remaining flexible, and motion control under significant time delay. This paper discusses our proposed solutions for each of these system-level challenges in soft robotics research.

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“…Soft robots are mostly made from soft or extensible materials, such as different kinds of rubber, that can deform and as a result, absorb the energy of a possible collision, making them much safer for human-robot interaction. They are often inspired by structures found in nature and can perform many different locomotion tasks, such as walking [5,6], rolling [7], grasping [8], swimming [9,10], and jumping [11][12][13][14]. Soft robots can even be used as wearable devices for medical purposes like rehabilitation [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It should store a lot of energy, be safe to use in every regard, operate silently, and be reusable and simple to implement at a low cost. Several different means of providing pressure for an untethered operation have been used, such as mechanical compression [6], storing previously compressed gas [9,10], using phase change [16][17][18], and several different chemical reactions [11,[19][20][21][22]. This review paper is written with the intention to simplify the choice of a pressure generation method when a soft robot is to be designed by giving an overview of the available options and their respective abilities and properties.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On-Board Pneumatic Pressure Generation Methods for Soft Robotics Applications

Adami

Seibel

2018

Actuators

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The design and construction of a soft robot are challenging tasks on their own. When the robot is supposed to operate without a tether, it becomes even more demanding. While a tethered operation is sufficient for a stationary use, it is impractical for wearable robots or performing tasks that demand a high mobility. Choosing and implementing an on-board pneumatic pressure source are particularly complex tasks. There are several different pressure generation methods to choose from, each with very different properties and ways of implementation. This review paper is written with the intention of informing about all pressure generation methods available in the field of soft robotics and providing an overview of the abilities and properties of each method. Nine different methods are described regarding their working principle, pressure generation behavior, energetic considerations, safety aspects, and suitability for soft robotics applications. All presented methods are evaluated in the most important categories for soft robotics pressure sources and compared to each other qualitatively and quantitatively as far as possible. The aim of the results presented is to simplify the choice of a suitable pressure generation method when designing an on-board pressure source for a soft robot.

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Towards a Self-contained Soft Robotic Fish: On-Board Pressure Generation and Embedded Electro-permanent Magnet Valves

Cited by 31 publications

References 20 publications

Autonomous Soft Robotic Fish Capable of Escape Maneuvers Using Fluidic Elastomer Actuators

Autonomous Soft Robotic Fish Capable of Escape Maneuvers Using Fluidic Elastomer Actuators

System-level challenges in pressure-operated soft robotics

On-Board Pneumatic Pressure Generation Methods for Soft Robotics Applications

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