Mitchell Shane K, Wang Xingrui, Acome Eric, Martin Trent, Ly Khoi, Kellaris Nicholas, Venkata Vidyacharan Gopaluni, Keplinger Christoph
Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Colorado Boulder Boulder CO 80309 USA.
School of Physics Science and Engineering Tongji University Shanghai 200092 China.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2019 Jun 11;6(14):1900178. doi: 10.1002/advs.201900178. eCollection 2019 Jul 17.
For soft robots to have ubiquitous adoption in practical applications they require soft actuators that provide well-rounded actuation performance that parallels natural muscle while being inexpensive and easily fabricated. This manuscript introduces a toolkit to rapidly prototype, manufacture, test, and power various designs of hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic (HASEL) actuators with muscle-like performance that achieve all three basic modes of actuation (expansion, contraction, and rotation). This toolkit utilizes easy-to-implement methods, inexpensive fabrication tools, commodity materials, and off-the-shelf high-voltage electronics thereby enabling a wide audience to explore HASEL technology. Remarkably, the actuators created from this easy-to-implement toolkit achieve linear strains exceeding 100%, a specific power greater than 150 W kg, and ≈20% strain at frequencies above 100 Hz. This combination of large strain, extreme speed, and high specific power yields soft actuators that jump without power-amplifying mechanisms. Additionally, an efficient fabrication technique is introduced for modular designs of HASEL actuators, which is used to develop soft robotic devices driven by portable electronics. Inspired by the versatility of elephant trunks, the above capabilities are combined to create an untethered continuum robot for grasping and manipulating delicate objects, highlighting the wide potential of the introduced methods for soft robots with increasing sophistication.
为了使软体机器人在实际应用中得到广泛应用，它们需要具备性能全面的软体致动器，这种致动器的性能可与天然肌肉相媲美，同时价格低廉且易于制造。本文介绍了一种工具包，用于快速制作、制造、测试和驱动各种具有类肌肉性能的液压放大自修复静电（HASEL）致动器设计，这些致动器可实现所有三种基本致动模式（膨胀、收缩和旋转）。该工具包采用易于实施的方法、廉价的制造工具、商用材料和现成的高压电子设备，从而使广大受众能够探索HASEL技术。值得注意的是，用这种易于实施的工具包制造的致动器实现了超过100%的线性应变、大于150 W/kg的比功率以及在100 Hz以上频率下约20%的应变。这种大应变、极快速度和高比功率的组合产生了无需功率放大机制就能跳跃的软体致动器。此外，还介绍了一种用于HASEL致动器模块化设计的高效制造技术，该技术用于开发由便携式电子设备驱动的软体机器人装置。受象鼻多功能性的启发，上述能力被结合起来，创造了一种用于抓取和操作易碎物体的无系绳连续体机器人，突出了所介绍方法在日益复杂的软体机器人方面的广泛潜力。
