Session: 06-12-03: Robotics, Rehabilitation

Paper Number: 113630

113630 - Development of Robotic Hand With Novel Soft 3D Printed Actuators 

Soft robotic hands have emerged as a promising technology in the Biomedical field and the development of prostheses. These devices use flexible materials such as silicone, rubber, and other polymers to create lightweight and adaptable structures that can mimic the complexity and dexterity of a human hand. Their soft and flexible nature offers a unique advantage over traditional rigid robotic systems, allowing for safer and more efficient environmental interaction. One of the main challenges in the design of a soft robotic hand is to develop a robust efficient soft actuator which has the required physiological response time and blocking force. While soft actuators offer many advantages over the traditional rigid actuators, their usage has potential downsides, such as limited strength, durability, precision, speed, and control.  Over the past decade, researchers have developed several soft actuators including ionic, thermal, chemical, and pneumatic soft actuators. Most of these actuators suffers from issues such as limited lifetime, slow response, and low efficiency. Although soft pneumatic actuators are efficient and durable, the compressor requirement makes their design bulky, and their application limited. To address this issue, in the current research we will integrate electromotors with a 3D printed soft structure to design a novel soft bending actuator. Since electromotors are durable and efficient the proposed soft actuator has a great potential to improve the performance and extend the application of soft robotic systems for real world problems.  The basic design idea for the soft actuator here can be explained based on the beam theory. From basic mechanics one knows that the bending deformation in the beam will happen when there is a variation of strain across the beam layers increasing from top to bottom or vice versa. Thus, this mechanism can be adopted to create a soft bending actuator. The novel actuator will be comprised from three basic parts namely the moving layers, the spacer, and the soft skin. While the moving layers will create the variation of strain across soft actuator, the spacer and the soft skin will make sure the relative distance between the moving layers will remain constant. The moving layers will be actuated using an electromotor. We will systematically analyze and study the geometry of this structure to obtain the required bending angle and blocking force for the hand. The design iteration includes both theoretical simulation, and 3D printing the actuator prototypes and experimentally verifying the results. The preliminary results shows that the actuator can successfully bend up 90 degrees and generate required forces to manipulate small objects. Our future work involves optimization, and position control of the robotic hand by integrating force sensors to the hand structure.

Presenting Author: Kishan Patel Kennesaw State University

Presenting Author Biography: GRA at KSU

Authors:

Kishan Patel Kennesaw State University
Kyra Magee Kennesaw State University
Bill Hoover Kennesaw State University
Jason Yu Kennesaw State University
Turaj Ashuri Kennesaw State University
Amir Ali Amiri Moghadam Kennesaw State University