Session: 07-08-01: Multibody Dynamic Systems and Applications

Paper Number: 94205

94205 - MATLAB Toolbox for Design and Motion Analysis of Compliant Mechanisms and Soft Robots 

A mechanism, machine, or robot is the integration of rigid bodies that work together to achieve a desired task such as locomotion through the Jansen’s linkage design, Watt, or Stephenson mechanisms. However, when we consider the designs in nature, they tend to be soft, bendable, and flexible, as in plants and animals. They use their compliance to achieve far more advanced tasks than even the most impressive machines humans have designed. Compliant designs, in other words flexible, have many advantages: they are repeatable, scalable, human safe, adaptable, lightweight, lower cost, easier to maintain, and fabricate, friction and hysteresis free, passively deployable, more accurate, soft, and energy-efficient. Since the motion in compliant mechanisms is transferred from one point to another through the deformation of the flexible or compliant links rather than the relative motion between two rigid links via revolute joints, the design minimizes part count, requires minimal or no assembly, accommodates imperfections, stores, and releases strain energy, achieves more complex motions by enabling maneuverability and agility. Owing to their inherent superior characteristics, compliant machines have been widely applied in the design of bistable, dwell, constant force, microelectromechanical (MEMs), precision positioning in nano, micro, and macro level, energy harvesting, and robot manipulators such as grippers.

Soft robotics is an emerging interdisciplinary field of research that facilitates the safe interaction of human and robotic systems due to the application of soft and compliant materials in robot structure. Soft robots have a wide range of applications, including medical robots, assistive robots, and search and rescue robots. The building block of these soft machines is novel soft actuators which are made of soft and compliant materials such as polymers-metal composites, elastomers, and hydrogels.  These soft machines operate based on pneumatic, electrical, chemical, and optical actuation mechanisms. The most common actuation mechanism for these soft machines is a soft pneumatic actuator. These actuators are commonly manufactured through the molding process of 3D printing.

Despite the numerous advantages of compliant links and soft robots, the design and modeling of such systems are challenging and require a great deal of knowledge and experience. To address this problem, we designed MATLAB Toolbox for the design and motion analysis of compliant mechanisms and soft robots.   Why MATLAB? Matrix laboratory (MATLAB) is a commercially available multi-paradigm numerical simulation and programming software favorably utilized by engineers. Students have free access to MATLAB in many institutions, and an introductory level MATLAB class is frequently offered to First-Year Engineering students. Why Simscape? MATLAB Simscape is the modeling environment analyzing both rigid and flexible systems using either the blocks provided in the library or the CAD models imported from modeling software and creating 3D visualization of the developed model. The MATLAB Apps developed for each course will consist of multiple submodules to simulate systems with a different set of parameters, analyze results and visualize system behavior with Simscape Mechanics Explorer. How accurately does Simscape simulate a physical system? To test how accurately Simscape models simulate and visualize the deformation and shape configuration of highly deformable soft robots and compliant mechanisms incorporating large deflecting flexures, we designed and fabricated the prototypes of a compliant five-bar mechanism and a soft five-bar robot by 3D printing. 

The Toolbox has a large set of features both for compliant mechanisms and soft robots. The compliant mechanisms toolbox includes three sub-modules: (1) classification of joints, (2) compliant large deflecting beams, and (3) designing compliant mechanisms. Module1 and Module 2 provide a vital source incorporating the types of joints and beams to create complex mechanisms as in Module 3. The soft robots toolbox includes the design of soft actuators and soft serial and parallel robots. Since the two  are interrelated, the submodules in the Flexible (Compliant) Machines lab can be utilized to design soft robots in the Soft Robotics lab.

Presenting Author: Andrea Contreras-Esquen Kennesaw State University

Presenting Author Biography: Andrea Contreras-Esquen is a graduate assistant in the mechanical engineering department at Kennesaw State University.

Authors:

Andrea Contreras-Esquen Kennesaw State University
Juan Delgado Kennesaw State University
Lance Soo Kennesaw State University
Kevin Saldivar Kennesaw State University
Lucas Schwenck Kennesaw State University
Amir Ali Amiri Moghadam Kennesaw State University
Ayse Tekes Kennesaw State University