Soft mobile robots driven by foldable dielectric elastomer actuators

Sun, Wenjie; Fan, Liu; Ma, Ziqi; Li, Chenghai; Zhou, Jinxiong

doi:10.1063/1.4960718

Cited by 46 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Recent work has sought to use these materials for soft robotic locomotion (Fig. 2i) because of their fast response times and low power requirements [63][64][65][66][67][68] (Table 1). Underwater, the weight is balanced by the buoyant force and the water can be used as an electric ground, thereby enabling high payload 64 and even untethered swimming 65 .…”

Section: Nature Electronicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untethered soft robotics

2018

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Research in soft matter engineering has introduced new approaches in robotics and wearable devices that can interface with the human body and adapt to unpredictable environments. However, many promising applications are limited by the dependence of soft systems on electrical or pneumatic tethers. Recent work in soft actuation and electronics has made removing such cords more feasible, heralding a variety of applications from autonomous field robotics to wireless biomedical devices. Here we review the development of functional untethered soft robotics. We focus on recent advances in soft robotic actuation, sensing and integration as they relate to untethered systems, and consider the key challenges the field faces in engineering systems that could have practical use in real-world conditions.

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Section: Nature Electronicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untethered soft robotics

2018

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“…In the field of DE, one of the main goals is to develop highperformance DEAs. Based on the working principle, various configurations of DEAs are designed for extensive applications, such as planar, [58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66] multilayer stacked, [26,27,[67][68][69][70][71] folded, [72,73] rolled, [24,[74][75][76][77][78] diamond, [79][80][81] bending, [82][83][84][85][86] zipping, [87] balloon, [22,23,[88][89][90][91][92][93] cone-shaped, [94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101] hinge, [102...…”

Section: Configurations Of Typical Deasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Review of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators and Their Applications in Soft Robots

Guo

Liu

et al. 2021

Advanced Intelligent Systems

149

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Robots play an increasingly important role in industrial production and daily life. Traditional robots are mostly made of hard materials, such as metal and plastic. Although rigidity of the material enables the traditional robot to perform tasks that are difficult for humans, for instance, carrying heavy objects, it also limits its adaptability. In nature, animals and plants are mostly made of soft materials, which make them have very high compliance and realize a variety of unimaginable actions. Similar to natural creatures, soft robots are usually composed of soft stimuli-responsive materials, which make them have good adaptability and compliance, and can achieve large deformation.Triggered by external stimuli, such as electric fields, magnetic fields, heat, and light, these soft stimuli-responsive materials can deform in a specific direction. The soft stimuli-responsive materials commonly used in soft robots include electroactive polymers (EAP), [1][2][3] hydrogels, [4][5][6][7] magnetic materials, [8][9][10] shape memory polymers (SMP), [11][12][13] shape memory alloys (SMA), [14,15] liquid crystal elastomers (LCE), [16][17][18] and so on. In addition, other actuation methods, such as pneumatic inflation and [19] electrostatic, [20,21] are also widely used in soft robots. To have an overview of different actuation methods, their performances with the maximum values are shown in Table 1. Although these maximum values were obtained from different actuators for each actuation method, they still demonstrate the potential upper limit.Dielectric elastomer (DE) is a typical EAP, which can generate significant deformation under the action of an external electric field. Thanks to its characteristics, such as large deformation, [22,23] fast response, [24,25] low elastic modulus, [2] high energy density, [26,27] light weight, [28,29] and low cost, [28] DE has the reputation of artificial muscles and has become one of the most promising materials in soft robots. [30][31][32][33][34] In this Review, we concentrate on the recent progresses of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) and their application in soft robots. In Section 2, we first introduce the working principle of DEAs, followed by the DE materials and compliant electrodes. Then, various DEAs with different designs are introduced. In Section 3, the application of DEAs in soft robots is divided into seven categories. Some recent highlights are described and discussed in detail, especially those with biological inspiration. We summarize some of the challenges in Section 4 and this is followed with the conclusion in Section 5. Dielectric Elastomer Actuators Working PrincipleGenerally, the structure of a DEA is similar to a sandwich, consisting of a DE membrane, where both surfaces are coated with compliant electrodes, as shown in Figure 1a. Once the compliant electrodes are subjected to voltage, an electric field will be generated in the membrane. The induced Maxwell stress causes the membrane to expand its area and contract its thickness. Based on the mechanism of ...

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“…The possibility of manufacturing DEAs with planar geometry makes them useful to obtain foldable robots. An example was reported by (Sun et al 2016), although it was a wheeled robot, which therefore didn't mimic any natural solution and so it is not discussed here.…”

Section: Foldable Robotsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bioinspired Electromechanically Active Polymer-Based Robotics

Carpi¹,

Coppola²,

Franco³

et al. 2020

Encyclopedia of Robotics

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Electromechanically active polymers are smart materials that can be used for actuation with biomimetic properties. Overview Electromechanically Active Polymers (EAPs) are "smart materials" that exhibit a mechanical response (deformation/force) to an electrical stimulus (Bar-Cohen 2004; Carpi 2016; Carpi and Smela 2009). They are referred to as "artificial muscle materials," as they can emulate the main functional properties of natural muscles, in that they can combine biomimetic motion with selfsensing ability and variable stiffness operation. They also show additional attractive properties, such as light weight, mechanical compliance, compact size, simple structure, low power consumption, acoustically silent operation, and low cost. Among the various types of EAPs available (Carpi 2016; Carpi and Smela 2009), this chapter focuses on the special kind known as "dielectric elastomers" (DEs)

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Soft mobile robots driven by foldable dielectric elastomer actuators

Cited by 46 publications

References 33 publications

Untethered soft robotics

Untethered soft robotics

Review of Dielectric Elastomer Actuators and Their Applications in Soft Robots

Bioinspired Electromechanically Active Polymer-Based Robotics

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