Flexible pneumatic robotic actuator FPA and its applications

Abstract

Totally different from conventional rigid robot, bioinspired soft robot has characteristics of deformable body, flexibility, continuous changeability and high active adaptability. It has become a new evolution in robotics. In this context, a flexible pneumatic robotic actuator FPA was proposed to act as both driver and executor for soft robot configration. The structure, principle and mathematic model of FPA are described. Based on FPA, a series of soft joints, such as soft bending joint, link-embedded soft bending joint, hybrid bending joint, torsion joint, spherical joint and side-sway joint, are developed. Then soft robots based FPA are reported, including climbing robot, cucumber gripper, end-effector for cone, multi-fingered dexterous hand and hand rehabilitator. All the structures, working principles and experiments of the soft joints and robots are elaborated.