Design And Performance Research Of Soft-body Actuators Based On Hyperelastic Materials

As a branch of soft robot,soft manipulator has attracted more and more attention of the scientific researchers in recent years.Compared with traditional manipulator,soft manipulator made of flexible materials is featured with simple morphological structure and high flexibility in grasping,which to some extent has compensated for the deficiency in rigid manipulator.It has a promising prospect in various fields,including medical treatment,rehabilitation with industrial manipulator,bionics and exploration.Now the study of soft robot has just been started and there are many difficulties to be solved in terms of material selection,structural design & manufacture and drive control.Therefore it would be of great significance in carrying out the relevant researches.In this paper,both torsional and grabbing actuators have been designed and prepared in addition to the study of their performance.After that,a modular soft torsion& grabbing system has been designed to combine torsional actuator with grabbing actuator through modularization.With multiple modular combination methods,soft actuator with different torsional angles has come into being,which can realize precise grabbing after the optimization of grabbing accuracy through the RGB-D visual algorithm.Finally,pneumatic control has been used for the accurate grabbing of target objects and the torsion in different angles,which also can achieve the torsion of target object in stereoscopic space.The main contents of this paper include:Firstly,aiming at the problem that existing soft manipulators can only implement grasping movement without any torsional movement,a modular soft torsion&grabbing system has been designed.Also according to the actuating characteristics of soft actuators,the soft materials for the actuators have been prepared according to the proportion between the Ecoflex series of silica gels and PDMS.After that,design plan and the specific production procedure have been provided for soft torsional and grabbing actuators.Secondly,explanation on the actuating principles of both actuators was given and ABAQUS was used as the simulation platform to analyze the relevant parameters that might affect the actuating performance of the actuators.Based on the results of the simulation experiment,the best materials suitable for both soft actuators,the structural shape of the torsional actuator and the best structural design parameters for both soft actuators can be preliminarily determined.The third,with the re-introduction and application of RGB-D algorithm,the grasping process of soft torsional manipulator has been optimized.After the constant comparison and training,the target objects can be grasped more precisely.Finally,the soft actuator samples with different structures and sizes will be produced,which will be tested on the experimental test platform regarding the actuating performance and statistical analysis will be made on the relevant experimental data.Also an experimental modular torsion & grabbing test platform will be constructed to test the combined modular soft manipulators and the experimental result will be analyzed.Our research will be of great application value in production line and medical treatment & health.