A Soft Robot Driven by a Spring-Rolling Dielectric Elastomer Actuator with Two Bristles.

ABSTRACT: Confined space searches such as pipeline inspections are widely demanded in various scenarios, where lightweight soft robots with inherent compliance to adapt to unstructured environments exhibit good potential. We proposed a tubular soft robot with a simple structure of a spring-rolled dielectric elastomer (SRDE) and compliant passive bristles. Due to the compliance of the bristles, the proposed robots can work in pipelines with inner diameters both larger and smaller than the one of the bristles. Firstly, the nonlinear dynamic behaviors of the SRDE were investigated experimentally. Then, we fabricated the proposed robot with a bristle diameter of 19 mm and then studied its performance in pipelines on the ground with inner diameters of 18 mm and 20 mm. When the pipeline's inner diameter w

SUBMITTER: Du Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10051427 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature