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Film-based anisotropic balloon inflatable bending actuator

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Abstract

Most soft pneumatic actuators require large pressures to realize their full deformations, have a non-negligible weight from their polymeric structures and have limited bending angles. In this work, a new soft pneumatic actuator utilizing anisotropic expansion of a pocket made from two different films is presented. This actuator is capable of bending angles of 500° while weighing less than 3 g and requiring less than 3 kPa to produce its maximum bending angle. It was also shown that the actuator can produce helical deformations by simply varying the angle of the bonded lines of the actuator. The effect of its most important geometric parameters as well as the application to two types of grippers is presented that can gently but firmly grasp objects or wrap themselves around structures.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Technology Innovation Program (or Industrial Strategic Technology Development Program (10080336) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MI, Korea), by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning) (No. 2018R1C1B6003990), and by the convergence technology development program for bionic arm through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science & ICT (No. 2014M3C1B2048175).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, 16419, Korea

    Ju Cheol Jung & Hugo Rodrigue

Authors
  1. Ju Cheol Jung
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  2. Hugo Rodrigue
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Correspondence to Hugo Rodrigue.

Additional information

Recommended by Editor Ja Choon Koo

Ju Cheol Jung was born in 1993. He received his B.Eng. degree in 2017 and M.S. degree in 2019 both from Sungkyunkwan University. His research interests are film-based actuators and soft robotics.

Hugo Rodrigue was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1985. He received his B.Eng. degree in 2008 from McGill University, his M.S. degree in 2010 from Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, and his Ph.D. from Seoul National University in 2015. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea. His research interests are soft actuation, smart materials and soft robotics.

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Jung, J.C., Rodrigue, H. Film-based anisotropic balloon inflatable bending actuator. J Mech Sci Technol 33, 4469–4476 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-019-0843-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-019-0843-7

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