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Automatic design of fiber-reinforced soft actuators for trajectory matching

2016; National Academy of Sciences; Volume: 114; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1073/pnas.1615140114

1091-6490

Fionnuala Connolly, Conor J. Walsh, Katia Bertoldi,

Robotic Mechanisms and Dynamics

Significance Fluid-powered elastomeric soft robots have been shown to be able to generate complex output motion using a simple control input such as pressurization of a working fluid. This capability, which mimics similar functions often found in biology, results from variations in mechanical properties of the soft robotic body that cause it to strain to different degrees when stress is applied with the fluid. In this work, we outline a mechanics- and optimization-based approach that enables the automatic selection of mechanical properties of a fiber-reinforced soft actuator to match the kinematic trajectory of the fingers or thumb during a grasping operation. This methodology can be readily extended to other applications that require mimicking or assisting biological motions.