Author : Yanshi Sun
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 108 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (15 download)
Book Synopsis Sensing and Control of a Pleated Soft Actuator by : Yanshi Sun
Download or read book Sensing and Control of a Pleated Soft Actuator written by Yanshi Sun and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soft robotics is a newly emerging branch of robotic engineering. It is mainly inspired by the research on biological bodies, where soft tissues adapt well to the unstructured and ever-changing environments. By mimicking animals, such as cephalopods, engineers have designed and fabricated innovational robots with soft materials, different from traditional rigid robots, these innovational robots have a higher flexibility. This character allows them to achieve many desirable functions, such as move through a gap narrower than their original size, or adapt themselves to a complex surface. Though many design and fabrication techniques have been developed for the soft actuator, the modeling, and control method is still under active research. Due to the compliance of the soft material, the traditional static and dynamic models for conventional robots cannot be used for modeling a soft actuator. An important method to model such actuators is the piece-wise constant curve (PCC) assumption, where the bending actuator is simplified as an arc. However, for the pleated soft actuator, whose chambers are discrete with each other, the strain of the whole actuator cannot be calculated directly. Thus, new static modeling method is needed. Additionally, there is also a need to improve current sensors, for the commercial strain gauges have a low measurement range and flexibility compared with soft actuators. In this paper, a soft actuator is designed with the help of FEA software, where different actuator characteristics are simulated to test their effects on the deformation performance. Then static model is built based on the PCC assumption to describe the deformation of the pleated soft actuator with a certain input air pressure, which includes the strain-pressure relationship, the bending angle and bending radius. Finally, a video tracking program is developed on MATLAB to measure the strain of the actuator. The static model has been validated with the tracking program and pressure sensor.