Design And Research Of Multidirectional And Bimodal Motion Soft Robots Based On Dielectric Elastomers

The control mode of muscle-pair or muscle-group improves the controllability of organisms and enriches their movement modes.Inspired by the animal’s multilateral muscles,from the perspective of structural innovation,this thesis proposes a bimodal motion soft robot with multi-directional motion ability based on the bilateral dielectric elastomer actuators.In this thesis,the dielectric elastomer with large deformation and highly speed response is used as the active material,and polyethylene terephthalate(PET)is used as its reinforcing frame.A dielectric elastomer bilateral actuator is designed,and it is assembled into a gear-shaped multidirectional bimodal soft robot.The specific research contents are as follows:First,from the perspective of bionics,a bilateral actuator based on unilateral dielectric elastomer actuators is designed.By comparing the basic characteristics of the unilateral actuator and the bilateral actuator,it is concluded that the performance of the bilateral actuator is more stable than that of the unilateral actuator and has more control dimensions.Based on the structure of bilateral actuator,two actuation modes of bilateral actuator are designed.Then,the finite element analysis software ABAQUS is used to model and simulate the bilateral actuator,and the basic performance of the bilateral actuator is simulated using Yeoh model.And the simulation results are verified by experiments,and the error sources are analyzed.Then,the basic performance of the bilateral actuator is characterized from three aspects experimentally: steady state performance,transient performance and cyclic performance,which lays the foundation for the subsequent design of the soft robot.After fully studying the basic performance of the bilateral actuator,in order to apply its excellent multimode control mode to the robot and give full play to its high controllability,this thesis further designs a gear-shaped soft robot composed of multiple bilateral actuators,and develops its two motion modes for its two steady-state positions.The first movement mode is multidirectional crawling.The gear-shaped robot has excellent multidirectional crawling ability,and has the function of six movement directions and instant turning;The second motion mode is bidirectional rolling motion.The gear-shaped robot can complete continuous rolling in two directions and has certain climbing ability.In this thesis,from the three aspects of design principle,motion principle analysis and performance test,the gear-shaped soft robot under two motion modes is studied in detail.In addition,this thesis also develops the function of gear robot as a soft gripper,which further broadens its application scenario.To sum up,the multi-directional and bimodal motion soft robot based on the bilateral actuator of the dielectric elastomer proposed in this thesis,from the perspective of bionics,provides a new idea for the realization of multi-mode motion robot in terms of structural innovation and the bionics soft robots.