A New Three-Dimensional Deformation Pneumatic Soft Actuator With Mutually Vertical PneuNets

Abstract

Pneumatic soft actuators are the essential structural components and crucial driving sources of soft robots, which can adapt to complex external environments and friendlily interact with contact objects. However, existing actuators lack the ability to simultaneously realize spatial deformation and satisfy the application requirements of soft robots. To this end, a novel three-dimensional deformation pneumatic soft actuator (TDPSA) with mutually vertical PneuNets is proposed in this article, which can deform in two different planes. Furthermore, TDPSAs are applied to a crocodile-inspired soft mobile robot and a soft gripper. First, for soft mobile robots, the pushing and supporting characteristics of TDPSAs are analyzed to show the motion ability. On this basis, two central pattern generator (CPG) networks are designed to control robot rhythmic motion according to soft actuators’ collaboration. Additionally, the interaction ability is verified for soft grippers. The force characteristics of TDPSAs are tested in horizontal and vertical directions, and a deformation measuring algorithm is proposed to sense the position information of complex soft actuators. Finally, a series of experiments are implemented on a self-built experimental platform, and the effectiveness of the proposed CPG control method, deformation measuring algorithm, and soft gripper grasping performance is validated.