Cacucciolo Vito, Nabae Hiroyuki, Suzumori Koichi, Shea Herbert
Soft Transducers Laboratory (LMTS), Institute of Microengineering, School of Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Suzumori-Endo Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan.
Front Robot AI. 2020 Jan 10;6:146. doi: 10.3389/frobt.2019.00146. eCollection 2019.
Soft wearable robots could provide support for lower and upper limbs, increase weight lifting ability, decrease energy required for walking and running, and even provide haptic feedback. However, to date most of wearable robots are based on electromagnetic motors or fluidic actuators, the former being rigid and bulky, the latter requiring external pumps or compressors, greatly limiting integration and portability. Here we describe a new class of electrically-driven soft fluidic muscles combining thin, fiber-like McKibben actuators with fully Stretchable Pumps. These pumps rely on ElectroHydroDynamics, a solid-state pumping mechanism that directly accelerates liquid molecules by means of an electric field. Requiring no moving parts, these pumps are silent and can be bent and stretched while operating. Each electrically-driven fluidic muscle consists of one Stretchable Pump and one thin McKibben actuator, resulting in a slender soft device weighing 2 g. We characterized the response of these devices, obtaining a blocked force of 0.84 N and a maximum stroke of 4 mm. Future work will focus on decreasing the response time and increasing the energy efficiency. Modular and straightforward to integrate in textiles, these electrically-driven fluidic muscles will enable soft smart clothing with multi-functional capabilities for human assistance and augmentation.
柔软可穿戴机器人可为下肢和上肢提供支撑，增强举重能力，减少行走和跑步所需的能量，甚至还能提供触觉反馈。然而，迄今为止，大多数可穿戴机器人都基于电磁电机或流体致动器，前者刚性且笨重，后者需要外部泵或压缩机，这极大地限制了集成度和便携性。在此，我们描述了一类新型的电驱动柔软流体肌肉，它将纤细的纤维状麦基本致动器与完全可拉伸的泵相结合。这些泵依靠电流体动力学，这是一种固态泵送机制，可通过电场直接加速液体分子。这些泵无需移动部件，运行时静音，且可在运行过程中弯曲和拉伸。每个电驱动流体肌肉由一个可拉伸泵和一个纤细的麦基本致动器组成，形成一个重量为2克的细长柔软装置。我们对这些装置的响应进行了表征，获得了0.84牛的堵死力和4毫米的最大行程。未来的工作将集中在缩短响应时间和提高能量效率上。这些电驱动流体肌肉模块化且易于集成到纺织品中，将使具有多功能能力的柔软智能服装能够为人类提供辅助和增强功能。
