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Design and Experiments of Pneumatic Soft Actuators

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2021

Liqiang Guo ,
Ke Li Open the ORCID record for Ke Li [Opens in a new window] ,
Guanggui Cheng ,
Zhongqiang Zhang ,
Chu Xu  and
Jianning Ding
Liqiang Guo
Affiliation:
Institute of Intelligent Flexible Mechatronics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
Ke Li*
Affiliation:
Institute of Intelligent Flexible Mechatronics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
Guanggui Cheng
Affiliation:
Institute of Intelligent Flexible Mechatronics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
Zhongqiang Zhang
Affiliation:
Institute of Intelligent Flexible Mechatronics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Photovoltaic Science and Engineering, Changzhou 213164, China
Chu Xu
Affiliation:
Institute of Intelligent Flexible Mechatronics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China
Jianning Ding
Affiliation:
Institute of Intelligent Flexible Mechatronics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Photovoltaic Science and Engineering, Changzhou 213164, China
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: like931212@163.com
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Summary

The soft actuator is made of superelastic material and embedded flexible material. In this paper, a kind of soft tube was designed and used to assemble two kinds of pneumatic soft actuators. The experiment and finite element analysis are used to comprehensively analyze and describe the bending, elongation, and torsion deformation of the soft actuator. The results show that the two soft actuators have the best actuation performance when the inner diameter of the soft tube is 4 mm. In addition, when the twisting pitch of the torsional actuator is 24 mm, its torsional performance is optimized. Finally, a device that can be used in the production line was assembled by utilizing those soft actuators, and some operation tasks were completed. This experiment provides some insights for the development of soft actuators with more complex motions in the future.

Keywords

Soft actuatorGas drivingSuperelastic materialEmbedded flexible materialFinite element analysis

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Robotica , Volume 39 , Issue 10 , October 2021 , pp. 1806 - 1815
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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