Computational and Experimental Design Exploration of 3D‐Printed Soft Pneumatic Actuators

Abstract

Soft robotics are known for their unique advantages over conventional rigid robotics, which include safer human–machine interaction, delicate handling of fragile items, and greater durability. Soft robotic actuators are essential components in soft robots as they produce the organic motions that rigid robotic actuators have difficulty in mimicking. Pneumatic actuators (PAs) are a type of soft robotic actuator that utilizes pneumatic pressure for actuation and are commonly used; however, the relationship between their design and actuation performance is not well understood. Herein, a cubic kernelized support vector regression (SVR) model based on finite element analysis is used to explore the design space of bending PAs with respect to their bending angles through the investigation of the dependencies between different design parameters. The model obtained from the SVR is then tested by experimentally comparing the bending angle of different 3D‐printed PAs from within the design space. The bending torque, an indicator of the actuation force of the PA, is also measured and compared for different design configurations. This study provides a computational and experimental framework and paves the way for future work on PAs, which has the potential to greatly propel the advancement of soft robotics.

Keywords

• computational analysis
• finite element method
• pneumatics
• soft robotics
• 3D printing