‘Multi-Material Fluidic Actuators’ – Bending, Twisting, and Extending Soft Robotics
Soft fluidic actuators consisting of elastomeric matrices with embedded flexible materials (e.g. cloth, paper, fiber, particles) are of particular interest to the robotics community because they are lightweight, affordable and easily customized to a given application. These actuators can be rapidly fabricated in a multi-step molding process and can achieve combinations of contraction, extension, bending and twisting with simple control inputs such as pressurized fluid. In our approach is to use new design concepts, fabrication approaches and soft materials to improve the performance of these actuators compared to existing designs. In particular, we use motivating applications (e.g. heart assist devices, soft robotic gloves) to define motion and force profile requirements. We can then embed mechanical intelligence into these soft actuators to achieve these performance requirements with simple control inputs.
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