A New Type of Soft Actuator: Design and Fabrication

Abstract

Soft robot is a new form of robot and the actuator is the key to its design. This paper designed a new type of soft actuator, which has the ability of stiffness tuning in addition to elongation and three-dimensional bending. This paper introduced the structure of the actuator and its principle of elongation, bending and stiffness tuning. Besides, manufacturing and steps for the soft actuator was proposed and the prototype was fabricated by the proposed methods and steps. Finally, based on the fabricated actuator, we demonstrated its elongation, single chamber bending and multi-chamber driving bending.