Pneumatic soft actuator and manufacturing method thereof

Abstract

The invention provides a pneumatic soft actuator which is of a spiral structure. A base body is made of a super-elastic material, an inflation air cavity is formed in the base body, input air pressure servers as driving force, and unfolding movement is achieved; the higher the air pressure is, the smaller the curvature is, and after the curvature is decreased to zero, negative curvature unfolding movement can be achieved; a strain limiting layer adheres to the outer side of the base body and is used for limiting axial stretching movement and enhancing unfolding movement; and a sealing blocking head at the tail end of the base body is used for blocking the air cavity, and air leakage is prevented. According to the pneumatic soft actuator, the spiral structure is adopted, thus, two directions of positive curvature and negative curvature for unfolding movement can be achieved along with increasing of the input air pressure, and in addition, large-scale unfolding movement can be achieved under low input air pressure. The spiral pneumatic soft actuator has the good unfolding movement performance and multiple potential application fields, such as the medical field used for developing novel recovery gloves and the like.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to the technical field of soft robots, in particular to an air-driven soft actuator and a manufacturing method thereof. Background technique [0002] Pneumatic soft actuator is a new type of pneumatic actuator, which has the advantages of light weight, good flexibility, quick response, strong pressure resistance and high safety. Therefore, it is widely used in research directions such as continuous robotic arms, soft grippers, auxiliary rehabilitation gloves, and bionic fish. Pneumatic soft actuators have become one of the important research objects in the field of soft robotics. Several typical pneumatic soft actuators are: McKibben pneumatic muscles invented by J.L.Mckibben in the 1950s, Jamming-based actuators, Pneumatic-nets pneumatic grids, pure torsion actuators and different types of actuators The combination. At this stage, the pneumatic software actuator has the following structural features: [0003] 1) The base body...

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Problems solved by technology

[0004] However, these pneumatic soft actuators in the prior art still have problems such as large air pressure required to maintain the shape, high energy consumption, and the inability to achieve a wider range of unfolding motions under a smaller input air pressure.

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