Title
Instant soft robot: A simple recipe for quick and easy manufacturing
Abstract
Soft robots offer interesting features and can be manufactured cheaply using widely available lab equipment. However, with increasing robot complexity, the manufacturing process often becomes expensive, requires sophisticated or experimental tools, highly skilled technicians and time. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach for the fabrication of soft pneumatic fiber-reinforced actuators. With the new design, a scaffolding to reinforce the actuator is printed inside a single-use mold. The mold is injected with silicone and broken apart, while the reinforcement detaches from the mold and remains within the actuator. Using flexible filaments such as nylon allows for the resulting actuators to be not only compliant but also squeezable. Our approach reduces the needed work effort and requires virtually no manufacturing skills when compared to current labor-intensive fabrication techniques. It also does not require any equipment other than an affordable, single nozzle desktop 3D printer. In the paper, we presented the design and fabrication process of different types of modules: linearly extending, bending and a manipulation module. We have compared the new instant design and the previous fiber-reinforced design in terms of bending, elongation and generated forces.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1109/RoboSoft48309.2020.9115973
2020 3rd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft)
Keywords
DocType
ISBN
single nozzle desktop 3D printer,instant soft robot,manufacturing process,soft pneumatic fiber-reinforced actuators
Conference
978-1-7281-6571-4
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
1
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jan Fras124.05
Jakub Glówka200.34
Kaspar Althoefer3847112.87