Abstract
Soft robots often show a superior power-to-weight ratio using highly compliant, light-weight material, which leverages various bio-inspired body designs to generate desirable deformations for life-like motions. In this letter, given that most material used for soft robots is light-weight in general, we propose a volumetrically enhanced design strategy for soft robots, providing a novel design guideline to govern the form factor of soft robots. We present the design, modeling, and optimization of a volumetrically enhanced soft actuator (VESA) with linear and rotary motions, respectively, achieving superior force and torque output, linear and rotary displacement, and overall extension ratio per unit volume. We further explored VESA's proprioceptive sensing capability by validating the output force and torque through analytical modeling and experimental verification. Our results show that the volumetric metrics hold the potential to be used as a practical design guideline to optimize soft robots’ engineering performance.
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@article{Wang2021VolumetricallyEnhanced,
title = {Volumetrically Enhanced Soft Actuator with Proprioceptive Sensing},
author = {Baiyue Wang and Weijie Guo and Shihao Feng and Hongdong Yi and Fang Wan and Chaoyang Song},
doi = {10.1109/LRA.2021.3072859},
year = {2021},
date = {2021-07-01},
urldate = {2021-07-01},
journal = {IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
volume = {6},
number = {3},
issue = {July},
pages = {5284-5291},
abstract = {Soft robots often show a superior power-to-weight ratio using highly compliant, light-weight material, which leverages various bio-inspired body designs to generate desirable deformations for life-like motions. In this letter, given that most material used for soft robots is light-weight in general, we propose a volumetrically enhanced design strategy for soft robots, providing a novel design guideline to govern the form factor of soft robots. We present the design, modeling, and optimization of a volumetrically enhanced soft actuator (VESA) with linear and rotary motions, respectively, achieving superior force and torque output, linear and rotary displacement, and overall extension ratio per unit volume. We further explored VESA's proprioceptive sensing capability by validating the output force and torque through analytical modeling and experimental verification. Our results show that the volumetric metrics hold the potential to be used as a practical design guideline to optimize soft robots’ engineering performance.},
keywords = {Corresponding Author, IEEE Robot. Autom. Lett. (RA-L), JCR Q2},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
