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Self-Sensing Pneumatic Compressing Actuator

Using soft pneumatic actuator is a feasible solution in the complex unstructured environment, owing to their inherent compliance, light weight, and safety. However, due to the limitations of soft actuators' materials and structures, they fall short of motion accuracy and load capacity, or need...

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Autores principales: Lin, Nan, Zheng, Hui, Li, Yuxuan, Wang, Ruolin, Chen, Xiaoping, Zhang, Xinming
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7759537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33362501
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2020.572856
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author Lin, Nan
Zheng, Hui
Li, Yuxuan
Wang, Ruolin
Chen, Xiaoping
Zhang, Xinming
author_facet Lin, Nan
Zheng, Hui
Li, Yuxuan
Wang, Ruolin
Chen, Xiaoping
Zhang, Xinming
author_sort Lin, Nan
collection PubMed
description Using soft pneumatic actuator is a feasible solution in the complex unstructured environment, owing to their inherent compliance, light weight, and safety. However, due to the limitations of soft actuators' materials and structures, they fall short of motion accuracy and load capacity, or need large-size, bulky compressors. Meanwhile, in order to gain better control, it is essential for them to sense the environments as well. This leads to high-price sensors or a complicated manufacture technique. Here, a self-sensing vacuum soft actuation structure is proposed, aiming at acquiring good balance among precision, output force, and actuation pressure. The actuator mainly comprises a flexible membrane and a compression spring. When actuated, the flexible membrane outside the actuator compresses the internal spring skeleton, realizing large contractile motion in axial direction. Its built-in force sensor can indirectly measure the absolute displacement of the actuator with certain accuracy (about 5% F.S.). Besides, it does not require high actuation pressure to generate enough output force. The actuator is quite easy to manufacture with low cost, and there are a variety of materials to choose from. We established quasi-static models for actuators built of two different kinds of membrane materials, and tested their accuracy and output force. In addition, to break through the limits of vacuum actuation, a method of positive-negative pressure combined actuation has been proposed, which lowers the requirements for air source equipments, increases actuation pressure, and reduces potential safety threats at the same time. This kind of soft actuators can also effectively resist and detect impacts. The design of a two-finger dexterous robot hand and robot joint based on this soft actuator illustrates its broad application prospects in the fields of mobile robots, wearable devices, and human–robot interaction.
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spelling pubmed-77595372020-12-26 Self-Sensing Pneumatic Compressing Actuator Lin, Nan Zheng, Hui Li, Yuxuan Wang, Ruolin Chen, Xiaoping Zhang, Xinming Front Neurorobot Neuroscience Using soft pneumatic actuator is a feasible solution in the complex unstructured environment, owing to their inherent compliance, light weight, and safety. However, due to the limitations of soft actuators' materials and structures, they fall short of motion accuracy and load capacity, or need large-size, bulky compressors. Meanwhile, in order to gain better control, it is essential for them to sense the environments as well. This leads to high-price sensors or a complicated manufacture technique. Here, a self-sensing vacuum soft actuation structure is proposed, aiming at acquiring good balance among precision, output force, and actuation pressure. The actuator mainly comprises a flexible membrane and a compression spring. When actuated, the flexible membrane outside the actuator compresses the internal spring skeleton, realizing large contractile motion in axial direction. Its built-in force sensor can indirectly measure the absolute displacement of the actuator with certain accuracy (about 5% F.S.). Besides, it does not require high actuation pressure to generate enough output force. The actuator is quite easy to manufacture with low cost, and there are a variety of materials to choose from. We established quasi-static models for actuators built of two different kinds of membrane materials, and tested their accuracy and output force. In addition, to break through the limits of vacuum actuation, a method of positive-negative pressure combined actuation has been proposed, which lowers the requirements for air source equipments, increases actuation pressure, and reduces potential safety threats at the same time. This kind of soft actuators can also effectively resist and detect impacts. The design of a two-finger dexterous robot hand and robot joint based on this soft actuator illustrates its broad application prospects in the fields of mobile robots, wearable devices, and human–robot interaction. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-12-11 /pmc/articles/PMC7759537/ /pubmed/33362501 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2020.572856 Text en Copyright © 2020 Lin, Zheng, Li, Wang, Chen and Zhang. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Lin, Nan
Zheng, Hui
Li, Yuxuan
Wang, Ruolin
Chen, Xiaoping
Zhang, Xinming
Self-Sensing Pneumatic Compressing Actuator
title Self-Sensing Pneumatic Compressing Actuator
title_full Self-Sensing Pneumatic Compressing Actuator
title_fullStr Self-Sensing Pneumatic Compressing Actuator
title_full_unstemmed Self-Sensing Pneumatic Compressing Actuator
title_short Self-Sensing Pneumatic Compressing Actuator
title_sort self-sensing pneumatic compressing actuator
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7759537/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33362501
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2020.572856
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