MORI-A: Soft Vacuum-actuated Module with 3D-Printable Deformation Structure

Many soft robots are made of polymeric materials such as silicone, urethane, and gel. These soft matter-based robots can be designed to have soft functionality by controlling the deformation, elastic modulus, and other properties of the flexible material. However, updating the shape of a soft robot...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE robotics and automation letters 2022-04, Vol.7 (2), p.1-1
Main Authors: Ogawa, Jun, Mori, Tomoharu, Watanabe, Yosuke, Kawakami, Masaru, Shiblee, Md Nahin Islam, Furukawa, Hidemitsu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artificial muscles
Connectors
Cotton
Elastic anisotropy
Elastic deformation
Elastic properties
Formability
Grippers
Modular design
Modules
Modulus of elasticity
Robots
Shape
Shear deformation
Soft Robot Applications
Soft Robot Materials and Design
Soft robotics
Soft Sensors and Actuators
Strain
Swimming
Three dimensional printing
Three-dimensional displays
Toys
Young's modulus
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Summary:Many soft robots are made of polymeric materials such as silicone, urethane, and gel. These soft matter-based robots can be designed to have soft functionality by controlling the deformation, elastic modulus, and other properties of the flexible material. However, updating the shape of a soft robot once it is developed is not considered to be highly effective. It has to be redesigned whenever different functions are required. The body of a modular robot is composed of connected voxel units, and the model and behavior of the robot can be altered conveniently by recombining the module groups. This study proposes a reconfigurable and vacuum-actuated soft matter modular block: MORI-A. It can realize different behaviors of uniaxial bending, shear deformation, and non-deformation depending on the 3D-printed structure contained in a unit. In addition, MORI-A can display elastic anisotropy that depends on the density of the 3D structure it contains and the trajectory it adopts during fabrication. This study quantitatively verifies the durability and bendability of MORI-A. We then show that the combination of deformable shapes can improve the diversity of soft modular robot designs by simultaneously developing many curved deformations. These designs include characters. soft modular grippers, applications for underwater swimming robots using curvature, and artificial muscles for dolls made of cloth or cotton that are not supposed to move spontaneously.
ISSN:2377-3766
2377-3766
DOI:10.1109/LRA.2022.3144789