Department of Mechanical Engineering, KU Leuven and Flanders Make, Celestijnenlaan 300, 3001, Leuven, Belgium.
Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, 17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge, CB3 0FS, UK.
Adv Mater. 2019 Jan;31(3):e1804598. doi: 10.1002/adma.201804598. Epub 2018 Nov 21.
Soft robots are an interesting alternative for classic rigid robots in applications requiring interaction with organisms or delicate objects. Elastic inflatable actuators are one of the preferred actuation mechanisms for soft robots since they are intrinsically safe and soft. However, these pneumatic actuators each require a dedicated pressure supply and valve to drive and control their actuation sequence. Because of the relatively large size of pressure supplies and valves compared to electrical leads and electronic controllers, tethering pneumatic soft robots with multiple degrees of freedom is bulky and unpractical. Here, a new approach is described to embed hardware intelligence in soft robots where multiple actuators are attached to the same pressure supply, and their actuation sequence is programmed by the interaction between nonlinear actuators and passive flow restrictions. How to model this hardware sequencing is discussed, and it is demonstrated on an 8-degree-of-freedom walking robot where each limb comprises two actuators with a sequence embedded in their hardware. The robot is able to carry pay loads of 800 g in addition to its own weight and is able to walk at travel speeds of 3 body lengths per minute, without the need for complex on-board valves or bulky tethers.
软机器人是经典刚性机器人在需要与生物体或精细物体交互的应用中的一种有趣的替代方案。弹性充气执行器是软机器人首选的致动机制之一，因为它们本质上是安全且柔软的。然而，这些气动执行器每个都需要专用的压力供应和阀门来驱动和控制它们的致动顺序。由于与电气引线和电子控制器相比，压力供应和阀门相对较大，因此具有多个自由度的气动软机器人的系绳是庞大且不切实际的。在这里，描述了一种将硬件智能嵌入软机器人中的新方法，其中多个执行器连接到相同的压力供应，并且它们的致动顺序通过非线性执行器和被动流量限制之间的相互作用来编程。讨论了如何对这种硬件排序进行建模，并在一个 8 自由度步行机器人上进行了演示，其中每条肢体由两个带有硬件嵌入序列的执行器组成。该机器人能够在不使用复杂的板载阀门或庞大的系绳的情况下，承载自身重量加上 800 克的有效载荷，并以每分钟 3 个体长的行进速度行走。
