Testing: 3D Print Functional Soft Robots

After finalizing our 3D silicone printer, we have 3D printed soft robots. These robots are: a 4 channel tentacle, a pneu-net actuator and a quadrupedal soft robot. You can see their pictures down below. 

Don't forget to watch our youtube video for the operation of these robots: 

We used fluidic control board from soft robotics toolkit to operate our robots: https://softroboticstoolkit.com/book/control-board You can also use 60 ml syringes to pump air into them but to make quadrupedal soft robot to walk you will need to code the fluidic control board.

The stl files of the soft robot designs and the code for the simple walking gait can be downloaded from the zip file located at the end of this page named as "Silicone robots and control script"

Soft quadrupedal robot was characterized for its performance regarding maximum hold, lift, and walking speed. The robot was 3D printed in 7 hours without any human intervention. Immediately after the print, we installed the tubing for actuation. The robot was 170 mm long, 80 mm wide, and 40 mm tall. The quadruped is capable of lifting the maximum weight of 0.61 kg and holding 1.05 kg at 51.7 kPa pressure. It can travel at a rate of 0.34 m/h by using a simple walking gait. 4 channel tentacle and pneu-net actuator were characterized for blocked force values and bend angles in response to a given pressure. The 4 channel tentacle printed in 1 hour. It was 95 mm tall and 35 mm wide in x and y directions. The tentacle is capable of applying maximum 5 N force toward the blocking surface at 88 kPa, and is able to bend 70 degrees at the same pressure. The pneu-net actuator printed in 3 hours. It was 124 mm long, 25 mm wide, and 32.5 mm tall. Pneu-net actuator is capable of applying maximum 1.2 N blocked force at 43.2 kPa pressure, and it is able to bend 170 degrees at 39.2 kPa. Down below you can see the figures from our experiments.

If you want to learn more about the our experiments and their results please check out our research paper. 

Research Paper

Direct 3D Printing of Silicone Elastomer Soft Robots and Their Performance Comparison with Molded Counterparts

Osman Dogan Yirmibesoglu, John Morrow, Stephanie Walker, Walker Gosrich, Reece Aidan Canizares, Hansung Kim, Uranbileg Daalkhaijav, Chloe Fleming, Callie Branyan and, Y. Mengüç, IEEE-RAS International Conference on Soft Robotics (ROBOSOFT), April 2018.