MORI-A CPS: 3D printed soft actuators with 4D assembly simulation

Soft modular robotics combines soft materials and modular mechanisms. We are developing a vacuum-driven actuator module, MORI-A, which combines a 3D-printed flexible parallel cross structure with a cube-shaped hollow silicone. The MORI-A module has five deformation modes: no deformation, uniform contraction, uniaxial contraction, flexion, and shear. By combining these modules, soft robots with a variety of deformabilities can be constructed. However, assembling MORI-A requires predicting the deformation from the posture and mode of the modules, making assembly difficult. To overcome this problem, this study aims to construct a system called “MORI-A CPS,” which can predict the motion of a soft robot composed of MORI-A modules by simply arranging cubes in a virtual space. This paper evaluates how well the motion of virtual MORI-A modules, defined as a combination of swelling and shrinking voxels, approximates real-world motion. Then, it shows that the deformations of virtual soft robots constructed via MORI-A CPS are similar to those of real robots.