Directly 3D-printed monolithic soft robotic gripper with liquid metal microchannels for tactile sensing

Spina, Filippo; Pouryazdan, Arash; Costa, J.; Cuspinera, Luis Ponce; Münzenrieder, Niko

doi:10.1088/2058-8585/ab3384

Cited by 23 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Adapted with permission from Preston et al, 2019. Copyright (2019 (Truby et al, 2018), liquid metals (Oh et al, 2020;Spina et al, 2019), dielectric elastomers (Hoffstadt and Maas, 2019;Xu et al, 2015), and ionic polymer-metal composites (Kruusamä e et al, 2010;Punning et al, 2007) could self-sense by detecting changes in resistance/capacitance.…”

Section: Closed-loop Control Based On Responsive Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biology and bioinspiration of soft robotics: Actuation, sensing, and system integration

Ren

Wei

et al. 2021

iScience

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Organisms in nature grow with senses, nervous, and actuation systems coordinated in ingenious ways to sustain metabolism and other essential life activities. The understanding of biological structures and functions guide the construction of soft robotics with unprecedented performances. However, despite the progress in soft robotics, there still remains a big gap between man-made soft robotics and natural lives in terms of autonomy, adaptability, self-repair, durability, energy efficiency, etc. Here, the actuation and sensing strategies in the natural biological world are summarized along with their man-made counterparts applied in soft robotics. The development trends of bioinspired soft robotics toward closed loop and embodiment are proposed. Challenges for obtaining autonomous soft robotics similar to natural organisms are outlined to provide a perspective in this field.

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Section: Closed-loop Control Based On Responsive Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biology and bioinspiration of soft robotics: Actuation, sensing, and system integration

Ren

Wei

et al. 2021

iScience

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“…Furthermore, soft force sensors are expected to be applied to electronic skin and intelligent robots to further promote the function of artificial products. Combining the advantages of traditional artificial skin and sensors, a soft electronic skin can provide not only aesthetic function, but also a perception function [132,133].…”

Section: Force Sensorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances in Liquid Metal-Enabled Flexible and Wearable Sensors

2020

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Sensors are core elements to directly obtain information from surrounding objects for further detecting, judging and controlling purposes. With the rapid development of soft electronics, flexible sensors have made considerable progress, and can better fit the objects to detect and, thus respond to changes more sensitively. Recently, as a newly emerging electronic ink, liquid metal is being increasingly investigated to realize various electronic elements, especially soft ones. Compared to conventional soft sensors, the introduction of liquid metal shows rather unique advantages. Due to excellent flexibility and conductivity, liquid-metal soft sensors present high enhancement in sensitivity and precision, thus producing many profound applications. So far, a series of flexible and wearable sensors based on liquid metal have been designed and tested. Their applications have also witnessed a growing exploration in biomedical areas, including health-monitoring, electronic skin, wearable devices and intelligent robots etc. This article presents a systematic review of the typical progress of liquid metal-enabled soft sensors, including material innovations, fabrication strategies, fundamental principles, representative application examples, and so on. The perspectives of liquid-metal soft sensors is finally interpreted to conclude the future challenges and opportunities.2 of 25 to monitor skin strain and muscle movement [32]. Introduction of soft sensors has greatly propelled the development of intelligent artificial skin, which provides not only aesthetic functions, but also perception of tactile sensation and temperature measurement [33,34]. They can also be applied to realize intelligent perception and control for robots [35][36][37]. Moreover, flexible sensors can tightly fit the object and maintain performance even while being stretched. In this way, they can respond to changes more sensitively and detect position and posture alteration in real time.Up to now, materials and techniques to achieve flexible sensors have been widely explored. To obtain better application output for the human body, both flexibility and biocompatibility of the substrates are required. Soft thermoplastic polymers and silicone elastomers are the most common substrates used to fabricate flexible sensors, such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), poly urethane (PU), polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and Eco Flex [38]. Moreover, the sensing elements are other important parts, which are mainly made up of conductive materials, including organic and inorganic nanomaterials [39,40]. Carbon-based materials, such as carbon nanotube and graphene, have been investigated in various soft circuits [39,[41][42][43][44][45][46]. Although circuits fabricated by carbon-based materials are highly stretchable, they are not as conductive as those fabricated by metals. Nanoparticles of rigid metals are applied to design soft circuits with high conductivity, among which silver nanoparticles have been extensively studied [47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. Moreover, liquid me...

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“…Soft robots, alternatively, use more processable and conformable soft materials (6,7) and offer promising opportunities for sensingactuation unification. Some somatosensory soft robots are capable of not only monitoring the roughness, softness, and temperature of objects but also grasping objects using control algorithms (8)(9)(10).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Defined by their specific working mechanisms, these sensors and actuators are all single-function units, still unable to realize sensation and actuation simultaneously. Therefore, add-on functionalities to soft robots have been used to physically integrate the two individual components by welding (7), three-dimensional (3D) printing (8), embedding (9), or laminating sensors and actuators (22). Fabricating such heterogeneous multimaterial systems typically involve complex integrating processes with multiple molding and lamination steps and complicated connection terminals (8,16).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Somatosensory actuator based on stretchable conductive photothermally responsive hydrogel

et al. 2021

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Mimicking biological neuromuscular systems’ sensory motion requires the unification of sensing and actuation in a singular artificial muscle material, which must not only actuate but also sense their own motions. These functionalities would be of great value for soft robotics that seek to achieve multifunctionality and local sensing capabilities approaching natural organisms. Here, we report a soft somatosensitive actuating material using an electrically conductive and photothermally responsive hydrogel, which combines the functions of piezoresistive strain/pressure sensing and photo/thermal actuation into a single material. Synthesized through an unconventional ice-templated ultraviolet–cryo-polymerization technique, the homogenous tough conductive hydrogel exhibited a densified conducting network and highly porous microstructure, achieving a unique combination of ultrahigh conductivity (36.8 milisiemens per centimeter, 103-fold enhancement) and mechanical robustness, featuring high stretchability (170%), large volume shrinkage (49%), and 30-fold faster response than conventional hydrogels. With the unique compositional homogeneity of the monolithic material, our hydrogels overcame a limitation of conventional physically integrated sensory actuator systems with interface constraints and predefined functions. The two-in-one functional hydrogel demonstrated both exteroception to perceive the environment and proprioception to kinesthetically sense its deformations in real time, while actuating with near-infinite degrees of freedom. We have demonstrated a variety of light-driven locomotion including contraction, bending, shape recognition, object grasping, and transporting with simultaneous self-monitoring. When connected to a control circuit, the muscle-like material achieved closed-loop feedback controlled, reversible step motion. This material design can also be applied to liquid crystal elastomers.

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Directly 3D-printed monolithic soft robotic gripper with liquid metal microchannels for tactile sensing

Cited by 23 publications

References 49 publications

Biology and bioinspiration of soft robotics: Actuation, sensing, and system integration

Biology and bioinspiration of soft robotics: Actuation, sensing, and system integration

Advances in Liquid Metal-Enabled Flexible and Wearable Sensors

Somatosensory actuator based on stretchable conductive photothermally responsive hydrogel

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