Design of a pneumatic soft actuator controlled via eye tracking and detection

Experimental study on a bending type soft pneumatic actuator for minimizing the ballooning using chamber-reinforcement

Soft robotics is an emerging area of research due to its safe interaction with humans; it also has exciting applications, such as wearable soft medical devices for rehabilitation, prosthetics, etc. Soft robots require soft actuators for performing desired movements, including bending, expansion, contraction, and twisting. This work focuses on bending-type multi-chambered extra-soft actuators actuated by pneumatic pressure. The corrugated design of a multi-chambered soft pneumatic actuator (SPA) is analyzed experimentally to observe the radial, longitudinal, and lateral expansions of different chambers, i.e., ballooning of the chambers under the application of air pressure. From the experimental study, it is observed that the ballooning mainly occurs at the free end of the actuator in a cantilever-type boundary condition, which could not be demonstrated by the computational solution using the finite element analysis (FEA). Moreover, it is observed that the effect of ballooning also disturbs the constant curvature profile of SPA. Therefore, a chamber-reinforcement solution is provided for minimizing the ballooning and ensuring the uniform bending of a SPA.

Continuously-deformable and stiffness-tunable soft manipulator achieving unmanned COVID-19 pandemic sampling

In recent years, COVID-19 has spread across the whole world, and manpowered collection of pharyngeal samples undoubtedly increases the possibility of cross-infections. In this article, based on our previous fabricated soft manipulator (Cell Reports Physical Science, 2021, 2, 100600), we performed the COVID-19 sampling on real human volunteers by exploiting a pre-programmed unmanned system. The unmanned sampling system mainly includes a soft manipulator and a rigid motion platform, which are adjusted by pneumatic control box and the motor control modules, respectively. Drawn on the lead-through teaching method, the unmanned sampling of COVID-19 is realized by recording the applied pressure in soft manipulator and the feed motion of rigid platform. This research provides a potential approach for unmanned COVID-19 sampling, solving the risk of cross-infection during manual collection.

A Paper-Based Cantilever Beam Mini Actuator Using Hygro-Thermal Response

New technological and scientific advances in the development of sensors and actuators demand the development of new devices to deal with recent problems and challenges in these new and emerging processes. Moreover, paper-based devices have tremendous potential for developing actuators as paper exhibits capillary transport and hygroexpansion due to swelling of the fibers when absorbing water. Therefore, this paper proposes a mini actuator that is based on a hygro-thermal-paper-based cantilever beam that is activated by means of a droplet of an aqueous solution in combination with a circulating electrical current to analyze its response. The contribution of this proposal includes the analysis of the flexural response of the mini actuator when it is tested by using two different solutions: distilled water and a water/alcohol solution. Additionally, four cases related to the droplet volume are studied and a statistical analysis of the bending responses is presented. The results achieved show that that water-alcohol solutions have a lower deviation in comparison with water only. Moreover, it is demonstrated that a specific change in the maximum displacement is obtained according to the volume and the type of solution. Thus, it is suggested that the response of the mini actuator can be tuned using different aqueous solutions.