Pneumatic micro finger as endeffecter of robot

Abstract

This paper reports the pneumatic PDMS micro finger as an endeffector of robot. The micro finger structures consist of two PDMS films with different mixing ratio of the base polymer and curing agent. An applied air pressure mainly contributes to the generation of the pulling force of the top PDMS layer with excess Si-H group and the large deformation of the flexible bottom layer with excess vinyl group. This combination of the micro finger or hand with a rigid PDMS layer and a flexible one is based on the human being's finger or hand. For the proper structural design rule, in this paper, the micro finer structures with different balloon shape are fabricated and tested by a pneumatic force. While the thickness ratio of the bottom layer and the top one is about 3, the bending angle of micro finger is most sensitive to the applied air pressure. During the repeat test for about 5 hours, there are no any noticeable degradation on the bending motion and the structural failure. The hybrid motion of the micro finger with two or three degree of freedom in micro world and the guide robot in macro world is successfully realized by using VR (virtual realty) system