Soft Robots Manufacturing: A Review

Abstract

The growing interest in soft robots comes from the new possibilities offered by these systems to cope with problems that cannot be addressed by robots built from rigid bodies. Many innovative solutions have been developed in recent years to design soft components and systems. They all demonstrate how soft robotics development is closely dependent on advanced manufacturing processes. This review aims at giving an insight on the current state of the art in soft robotics manufacturing. It first puts in light the elementary components that can be used to develop soft actuators, whether they use fluids, shape memory alloys, electro-active polymers or stimuli-responsive materials. Other types of elementary components, such as soft smart structures or soft-rigid hybrid systems, are then presented. The second part of this review deals with the manufacturing methods used to build complete soft structures. It includes molding, with possibly reinforcements and inclusions, additive manufacturing, thin-film manufacturing, shape deposition manufacturing, and bonding. The paper conclusions sums up the pros and cons of the presented techniques, and open to developing topics such as design methods for soft robotics and sensing technologies.

Evaluation of 3D Printed Soft Robots in Radiation Environments and Comparison With Molded Counterparts

“…To send a soft robot in an unstructured radiation environment for inspection purposes or delivery tasks, it must offer significant dexterity and mechanical compliance, with minimum control requirements. However, disadvantages of soft robots such as limited afforded strength and payload (Lee et al, 2017), limited control and autonomy (Trivedi et al, 2008;Singh and Krishna, 2014), need for tethering (Majidi, 2014;Schmitt et al, 2018), and limited sensory equipment (Rus and Tolley, 2015;Lee et al, 2017) still need to be overcome. To meet some of these demands, the soft actuators within the soft robot must enhance their functionality, which is limited by fabrication techniques (Marchese et al, 2015).…”

FE Analyses of Hyperelastic Solids under Large Bending: The Role of the Searle Parameter and Eulerian Slenderness

“…• starting from a trial solution corresponding to the linearized theory, the bending moment m x (s (1) i ) is obtained at the first iteration;…”

“…• for each node, Equation (6) is solved in the unknown radius of curvature R 0 (s (1) i ); • then, the rotation and displacements fields are assessed from (9)-(11) for each node, providing the Eulerian coordinates of the beam axis, i.e., [z (2) i , y…”

“…The soft robots [1], i.e., robots based on extremely compliant components, are used to produce pneumatic robots [2], to simulate artificial systems [3], animals [4], human hands [5] and other gripper devices [6]. For these kinds of high-tech applications, the mechanical role of the external load is played by the light [7], humidity [8] or electricity [9] to drive motion.…”

“…(a) T1 case A 2 (a) (b) T 1 case A 2 (b) (c) T 1 case A 2 (c) (d) T 2 case A 2 (a) (e) T 2 case A 2 (b) (f) T 2 case A 2 (c) (g) T 3 case A 2 (a) (h) T 3 case A 2 (b) (i) T 3 caseA 2 (c) Study case A 2 at increment 3 (µ = 100): Stresses comparison [MPa] between the theoretical model (contour plot) and FE model (isolines with boxed value).…”