Origami structures are highly demanded for engineering applications. Using origami folding to design and actuate mechanisms and machines offers attractive opportunities. In this paper, we design a crawling robot driven by pneumatic foldable actuators (PFAs) based on Miura-ori, according to the parallel foldable structure and different control patterns, which can perform different movements. The PFA inspired from Miura-ori is composed of a folding part, transition part, and sealing part, made by flexible materials and a paper skeleton. This actuator can obtain a large deformation by folding under negative pressure due to its own characteristics, and the relationship between deformation and pressure is analyzed. According to the different folding and unfolding times of left and right actuators, the crawling robot can perform both linear and turning movements. The speed of the robot is about 5 mm/s and it can turn at a speed of about 15°/s. The crawling robot uses the ability of the foldable structure to cope with the challenges of different environments and tasks.
Flexible pressure sensors have attracted much attention
due to
their significant potentials in E-skin, artificial intelligence, and
medical health monitoring. However, it still remains challenging to
achieve high sensitivity and wide sensing range simultaneously, which
greatly limit practical applications for flexible sensors. Inspired
by the surface stress-induced structure of mimosa, we propose a novel
flexible sensor based on the carbon nanotube paper film (CNTF) and
stress-induced square frustum structure (SSFS) and demonstrated their
excellent sensing performances. Based on interdigital electrodes and
uniform CNTF consisting of fibers with large specific surface area,
rich conductive paths are formed for enhanced resistance variation.
Besides, both experiments and modeling are conducted to verify the
synergistic effect of substrates with diverse stiffnesses and SSFS.
The SSFS of polydimethylsiloxane transfer small pressure to the CNTF,
resulting in sensitive responses with a broad resistance variation.
The sensor achieves an ultrahigh sensitivity (2027.5 kPa–1) and a wide pressure range (0.0003–200 kPa). Therefore, it
can not only detect human signals such as pulse, vocal cord vibration,
wrist flexion, and foot pressure but also be integrated onto car tires
to monitor vehicle statuses. These fascinating features endow the
sensors with great potentials for future health monitoring, human-computer
interaction, and virtual reality.
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