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3D Printing Assisted Fabrication of Soft Robotic Hand with Embedded Soft Electronic Circuits

Introduction

Despite the recent advancements in soft actuators and robots, integrating electronic functionalities into soft robotic systems remains a challenge. Particularly, a direct combination of conventional, rigid electronic components such as copper wires and soft robotic parts poses numerous problems with structural integrity and stability. This is because the mechanical property mismatch between the rigid electronic components and soft body generates points of stress concentration at the interface that typically becomes initiation...

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3D printing soft gripper stiffened by passive particle jamming

Introduction

A variety different kinds of soft actuators based on different working principles have been developed. Most soft grippers do not allow stiffness modulation when grasping, these actuators cannot provide very high stiffness and large grasp force, thus the weight that such a soft gripper can hold is limited.

Researchers have proposed some ways to increase the stiffness of a soft gripper. For stiffness modulation of soft grippers, current methods need dedicated design and control, complicating both the actuator geometric configuration and...

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3D Silicone Printer

Hello!

Welcome to our 3D Silicone Printer project page. Our team has been working on this project for the last 2 years and we finally succeed to 3D print static and dynamic silicone objects. More importantly we bring the 3D printed soft robots alive.

Here is a teaser video of 3D Silicone Printer in action and functional soft robots that we have printed! 

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A Synergistic Design Leveraging the Diverse Functionalities of Soft- and Rigid-Bodied Robots

Soft robots offer the versatility to accomplish a number of basic functions, including moving in tight spaces, climbing walls, and grasping items. This versatility comes naturally through actuation mechanisms that provide large forces and displacements in highly compliant packages. In their current state of development, the majority of the freedom in soft-bodied robot design is achieved when their support equipment (pneumatic cylinders, air valves, computational hardware) is kept off-board from the soft robot. Unfortunately, fixturing this support equipment can severely limit the...

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About

Toolkit Devlopment

The Soft Robotics Toolkit grew out of research conducted at Harvard University and Trinity College Dublin which focused on developing better instructional kits for hands-on design courses (Dónal P. Holland et al. 2014). The Toolkit was initially developed in the...

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Artificial eyelid closure using soft exopatches

The major symptom of Bell’s Palsy (and other facial nerve related illnesses) is an inability to close the eyelid or blink, which can lead to blindness if left untreated. Although most patients recover fully in 3 months, most treatment methods require invasive, surgery. Our project aims to build a device using an "exopatch" which can contract and provide downwards force on the eyelid to artificially recreate a blink motion.  

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B-Robot

Our proposed Idea: B-Robot (BROBOT)

Science-fiction movies have always been an inspiration for scientists and researchers. The Star Wars franchise deserves a special mention here, having inspired some of the products that we see today like smartphones, artificial skin and prosthetics. Our team got its motivation from one of the droids in the latest movie from the franchise, BB-8. What particularly excited us was the simple balancing and motion exhibited by BB-8, especially in its rapid movements and when making turns. Our aim is to create a soft robot which can mimic the...

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Bio-inspired Manta Ray Robot

About the Project

This project aims to use the efficiency of nature to create a nimble Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) with a considerable service life. To do this, the team turned to its attention to a master of efficiency in our oceans, the manta ray. These open water creatures can glide for miles, and when they do flap their fins, a single stroke can carry them many more body lengths than other animals.

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Combustion-Driven Actuators

Combustion-driven actuators (CDAs) are a class of soft actuators. They use the ignition of combustible mixtures (i.e. air-methane) to drive actuation. The Functional Material Laboratory at ETH Zurich has developed a fabrication technique for production of silicone monoblock structures (i.e. single continuous parts with no seams). These structures are both soft and able to withstand the high stresses imposed by combustion.

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Design and Development of a Hand Gesture Controlled Soft Robot Manipulator

WHO (World Health Organization) Ebola Road Map statistics (Published in 28th August 2014) reflects our current capacity of safely handling an unknown epidemic situation. It shows that we should still work on developing much sophisticated technologies to reduce death counts in epidemic situations. One attempt of reducing the deaths of medical sector workers will be the Design and Development of a Hand Gesture Controlled Soft Robot Manipulator. This will be helping the medical sector workers to gain access in to an unfamiliar situation remotely and handle it carefully using...

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Dielectric Elastomer Actuators

Dielectric elastomers actuators (DEA) are a class of electroactive polymers which work based on inducing of deformation with an electric field, which was demonstrated in 1880 by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen by spraying charges on a piece of natural rubber (Röntgen 1880). A common design of DEAs is to sandwich a soft insulating elastomer membrane between two compliant electrodes. When a voltage is...

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