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Soft Gripper with Electro-Thermally Driven Artificial Fingers Made of Tri-Layer Polymers and a Dry Adhesive Surface

Soft grippers have attracted great interest in the soft robotics research field. Due to their lack of deformability and control over compliance, it can be challenging for them to pick up objects that are too large or too small in size. In particular, compliant objects are vulnerable to the large gra...

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Autores principales: Li, Xiangmeng, Shi, Qiangshengjie, Wei, Huifen, Zhao, Xiaodong, Tong, Zhe, Zhu, Xijing
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9624333/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36278724
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics7040167
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author Li, Xiangmeng
Shi, Qiangshengjie
Wei, Huifen
Zhao, Xiaodong
Tong, Zhe
Zhu, Xijing
author_facet Li, Xiangmeng
Shi, Qiangshengjie
Wei, Huifen
Zhao, Xiaodong
Tong, Zhe
Zhu, Xijing
author_sort Li, Xiangmeng
collection PubMed
description Soft grippers have attracted great interest in the soft robotics research field. Due to their lack of deformability and control over compliance, it can be challenging for them to pick up objects that are too large or too small in size. In particular, compliant objects are vulnerable to the large grasping force. Therefore, it is crucial to be able to adjust the stiffness of the gripper materials. In this study, a soft gripper consisting of three artificial fingers is reported on. Each of the artificial fingers is made of a tri-layer polymer structure. An exterior layer, made of an ecoflex–graphene composite is embedded with electric wires as a heating source, by applying direct-current potential. The Joule heat not only allows for deformation of the exterior layer, but also transfers heat to the middle layer of the thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) elastomer. As a result, the stiffness of the TPU layer can be adjusted using electro-thermal heating. Meanwhile, the third layer consists of a polydimethylsiloxane replica as a supporting layer with a gecko-inspired dry adhesive structure. By applying voltage through electric wires, the artificial fingers can bend and, thus, the soft gripper can hold the objects, with the help of the dry adhesive layer. Finally, objects like a shuttlecock, tennis ball and a glass beaker, can be picked up by the soft gripper. This research may provide an insight for the design and fabrication of soft robotic manipulators.
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spelling pubmed-96243332022-11-02 Soft Gripper with Electro-Thermally Driven Artificial Fingers Made of Tri-Layer Polymers and a Dry Adhesive Surface Li, Xiangmeng Shi, Qiangshengjie Wei, Huifen Zhao, Xiaodong Tong, Zhe Zhu, Xijing Biomimetics (Basel) Article Soft grippers have attracted great interest in the soft robotics research field. Due to their lack of deformability and control over compliance, it can be challenging for them to pick up objects that are too large or too small in size. In particular, compliant objects are vulnerable to the large grasping force. Therefore, it is crucial to be able to adjust the stiffness of the gripper materials. In this study, a soft gripper consisting of three artificial fingers is reported on. Each of the artificial fingers is made of a tri-layer polymer structure. An exterior layer, made of an ecoflex–graphene composite is embedded with electric wires as a heating source, by applying direct-current potential. The Joule heat not only allows for deformation of the exterior layer, but also transfers heat to the middle layer of the thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) elastomer. As a result, the stiffness of the TPU layer can be adjusted using electro-thermal heating. Meanwhile, the third layer consists of a polydimethylsiloxane replica as a supporting layer with a gecko-inspired dry adhesive structure. By applying voltage through electric wires, the artificial fingers can bend and, thus, the soft gripper can hold the objects, with the help of the dry adhesive layer. Finally, objects like a shuttlecock, tennis ball and a glass beaker, can be picked up by the soft gripper. This research may provide an insight for the design and fabrication of soft robotic manipulators. MDPI 2022-10-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9624333/ /pubmed/36278724 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics7040167 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Li, Xiangmeng
Shi, Qiangshengjie
Wei, Huifen
Zhao, Xiaodong
Tong, Zhe
Zhu, Xijing
Soft Gripper with Electro-Thermally Driven Artificial Fingers Made of Tri-Layer Polymers and a Dry Adhesive Surface
title Soft Gripper with Electro-Thermally Driven Artificial Fingers Made of Tri-Layer Polymers and a Dry Adhesive Surface
title_full Soft Gripper with Electro-Thermally Driven Artificial Fingers Made of Tri-Layer Polymers and a Dry Adhesive Surface
title_fullStr Soft Gripper with Electro-Thermally Driven Artificial Fingers Made of Tri-Layer Polymers and a Dry Adhesive Surface
title_full_unstemmed Soft Gripper with Electro-Thermally Driven Artificial Fingers Made of Tri-Layer Polymers and a Dry Adhesive Surface
title_short Soft Gripper with Electro-Thermally Driven Artificial Fingers Made of Tri-Layer Polymers and a Dry Adhesive Surface
title_sort soft gripper with electro-thermally driven artificial fingers made of tri-layer polymers and a dry adhesive surface
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9624333/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36278724
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomimetics7040167
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