Enhancing interaction performance of soft pneumatic-networks grippers by skeleton topology optimization

The Enhanced Adaptive Grasping of a Soft Robotic Gripper Using Rigid Supports

“…A bending performance comp ison test and lifting force measurement test were conducted to verify the bending cur design and the rigid supports design. The rigid supports increase the lifting force of t [3,6,7,11,20,21]. Our work is plotted according to 3.4. lifting force measurement, which is highlighted in a yellow star.…”

“…When the actuator is too long, the deformation curvature of the actuator will be much greater than the diameter of the sphere [10], which decreases the contact area between the gripper and the surface of objects. Applying the skeleton layer outside the soft gripper well constrains the radial expansion and significantly enhances the bending motion [11].…”

Multimaterial Embedded 3D Printing of Composite Reinforced Soft Actuators

“…Soft composite reinforced actuators (CRAs), as a branch of SPAs, employ a combination of inextensible materials with soft elastomer materials, greatly expanding the actuator functionalities while still adopting simple geometries. Conventional CRAs are fabricated by wrapping the soft inflating materials (e.g., silicone rubber) with stiff fibers (Kevlar fiber [ 6 – 9 ], thermoplastic polyurethanes [ 10 ], resin [ 11 , 12 ], and others). Compared with other types of SPAs (especially PneuNet actuators [ 13 ]), CRAs feature simple structural design, uniform stress distribution, and convenient modeling and programming methods [ 14 ].…”

“…Regarding the manufacturing of CRAs, multistep molding is the most used strategy [ 11 , 15 , 16 ]. However, it suffers from limited design freedom while requiring much manual intervention, which poses challenges in accurate assembly [ 10 ].…”

“…Three-dimensional (3D) printing, as an emerging digital manufacturing approach, has been demonstrated for the rapid fabrication of CRAs with complex reinforced patterns. Most previous reports of 3D printed CRAs predominantly focus on the manual assembly of fiber layers with molded silicone elastomer bodies [ 11 , 19 ] printed typically via vat photopolymerization. These methods still involve inaccurate and time-consuming manual casting work.…”