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Soft Mobile Robots with On-Board Chemical Pressure Generation

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Robotics Research

Part of the book series: Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics ((STAR,volume 100))

Abstract

We wish to develop robot systems that are increasingly more elastic, as a step towards bridging the gap between man-made machines and their biological counterparts. To this end, we develop soft actuators fabricated from elastomer films with embedded fluidic channels. These actuators offer safety and adaptability and may potentially be utilized in robotics, wearable tactile interfaces, and active orthoses or prostheses. The expansion of fluidic channels under pressure creates a bending moment on the actuators and their displacement response follows theoretical predictions. Fluidic actuators require a pressure source, which limits their mobility and mainstream usage. This paper considers instances of mechanisms made from distributed elastomer actuators to generate motion using a chemical means of pressure generation. A mechanical feedback loop controls the chemical decomposition of hydrogen peroxide into oxygen gas in a closed container to self-regulate the actuation pressure. This on-demand pressure generator, called the pneumatic battery, bypasses the need for electrical energy by the direct conversion of chemical to mechanical energy. The portable pump can be operated in any orientation and is used to supply pressure to an elastomeric rolling mobile robot as a representative for a family of soft robots.

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Acknowledgements

This work was done in the Distributed Robotics Laboratory at MIT with partial support from the DARPA DSO “Chembots” project (W911NF-08-C-0060). We are grateful to DARPA and to our collaborators.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Cagdas D. Onal & Daniela Rus

  2. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Xin Chen & George M. Whitesides

Authors
  1. Cagdas D. Onal
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  2. Xin Chen
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  3. George M. Whitesides
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  4. Daniela Rus
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cagdas D. Onal .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Henrik I. Christensen

  2. Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

    Oussama Khatib

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Onal, C.D., Chen, X., Whitesides, G.M., Rus, D. (2017). Soft Mobile Robots with On-Board Chemical Pressure Generation. In: Christensen, H., Khatib, O. (eds) Robotics Research . Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 100. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29363-9_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29363-9_30

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-29362-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-29363-9

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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