Integrated Design and Fabrication of Pneumatic Soft Robot Actuators in a Single Casting Step.

ABSTRACT: Bio-inspired soft robots have already shown the ability to handle uncertainty and adapt to unstructured environments. However, their availability is partially restricted by time-consuming, costly, and highly supervised design-fabrication processes, often based on resource-intensive iterative workflows. Here, we propose an integrated approach targeting the design and fabrication of pneumatic soft actuators in a single casting step. Molds and sacrificial water-soluble hollow cores are printed using fused filament fabrication. A heated water circuit accelerates the dissolution of the core's material and guarantees its complete removal from the actuator walls, while the actuator's mechanical operability is defined through finite element analysis. This enables the fabrication of actuators with

SUBMITTER: Silva A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11254383 | biostudies-literature | 2024

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature