Soft robots actuated by pressurization and inflation of a pneumatic network (a "pneunet") of small channels in elastomeric materials are appealing for their ability to produce sophisticated motions with simple controls. Although current designs of pneu-nets achieve motion with large amplitudes, they do so relatively slowly (that is, over seconds). This paper describes a new design for pneu-nets that reduces the amount of gas that must be transported for inflation of the pneu-net, and thus increases its speed of actuation. A simple actuator can bend from a linear shape to a quasi-circular shape in 50 milliseconds when pressurized at ΔP = 345 kPa. At high rates of pressurization and inflation, the path along which the actuator bends depends on this rate. When inflated fully, the channels and chambers of this new pneu-net design experience only one-tenth the change in volume of that required for a motion of equal amplitude using the previous design. This small change in volume requires comparably low levels of strain in the material at maximum amplitudes of actuation, and commensurately low rates of fatigue and failure. This actuator can operate over a million cycles without significant degradation of performance. This design for soft robotic actuators combines high rates of actuation with high reliability of the actuator, and opens new areas of application for them.

Buckling is exploited to design a new class of three-dimensional metamaterials with negative Poisson's ratio. A library of auxetic building blocks is identified and procedures are defined to guide their selection and assembly. The auxetic properties of these materials are demonstrated both through experiments and finite element simulations and exhibit excellent qualitative and quantitative agreement.

We report a flexible and wearable pressure sensor based on the giant piezocapacitive effect of a three-dimensional (3-D) microporous dielectric elastomer, which is capable of highly sensitive and stable pressure sensing over a large tactile pressure range. Due to the presence of micropores within the elastomeric dielectric layer, our piezocapacitive pressure sensor is highly deformable by even very small amounts of pressure, leading to a dramatic increase in its sensitivity. Moreover, the gradual closure of micropores under compression increases the effective dielectric constant, thereby further enhancing the sensitivity of the sensor. The 3-D microporous dielectric layer with serially stacked springs of elastomer bridges can cover a much wider pressure range than those of previously reported micro-/nanostructured sensing materials. We also investigate the applicability of our sensor to wearable pressure-sensing devices as an electronic pressure-sensing skin in robotic fingers as well as a bandage-type pressure-sensing device for pulse monitoring at the human wrist. Finally, we demonstrate a pressure sensor array pad for the recognition of spatially distributed pressure information on a plane. Our sensor, with its excellent pressure-sensing performance, marks the realization of a true tactile pressure sensor presenting highly sensitive responses to the entire tactile pressure range, from ultralow-force detection to high weights generated by human activity.

We introduce a class of continuum shell structures, the Buckliball, which undergoes a structural transformation induced by buckling under pressure loading. The geometry of the Buckliball comprises a spherical shell patterned with a regular array of circular voids. In order for the pattern transformation to be induced by buckling, the possible number and arrangement of these voids are found to be restricted to five specific configurations. Below a critical internal pressure, the narrow ligaments between the voids buckle, leading to a cooperative buckling cascade of the skeleton of the ball. This ligament buckling leads to closure of the voids and a reduction of the total volume of the shell by up to 54%, while remaining spherical, thereby opening the possibility of encapsulation. We use a combination of precision desktop-scale experiments, finite element simulations, and scaling analyses to explore the underlying mechanics of these foldable structures, finding excellent qualitative and quantitative agreement. Given that this folding mechanism is induced by a mechanical instability, our Buckliball opens the possibility for reversible encapsulation, over a wide range of length scales.

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