Abstract
Vacuum-powered soft pneumatic actuators (V-SPAs) are considered to be fail-safe, because their maximum forces and displacements are restricted by environmental pressure from actuating. However, their performances are significantly influenced by the selection of materials. V-SPAs fabricated by materials with low modulus of elasticity might fall short of output forces for many tasks. This article proposes a novel approach aiming to improve the performance of V-SPAs. Based on our previously developed vacuum-powered soft linear actuators (called as “VSLA”), a new vacuum-powered soft linear actuator strengthened by granular jamming (called as “J-VSLAs”) is proposed to achieve higher actuation stress without sacrificing compliance. The new J-VSLA changes the stiffness partially and it can lift about four times of weight (at 20% of strains) compared to its no-granule version. In addition, the mechanical efficiencies of the J-VSLAs is increased by about 10%. Our results highlight the effectiveness of J-VSLAs for improving the mechanical properties of soft actuators and reducing the material selection constraints on the performance of V-SPAs.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (Nos. 51875507).
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Lin, Y., Zou, J., Yang, H. (2019). A Vacuum-Powered Soft Linear Actuator Strengthened by Granular Jamming. In: Yu, H., Liu, J., Liu, L., Ju, Z., Liu, Y., Zhou, D. (eds) Intelligent Robotics and Applications. ICIRA 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11741. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27532-7_47
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27532-7_47
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