Environmental Insulation of 3D Printable Origamic Soft Actuators

Soft robotics are receiving more and more attentions by utilizing soft actuators to gain inherent compliance and natural adaptions to environment. As the application realm of soft robotics are spreading to various scenarios, the mechanical and functional demands for soft actuators are also increasing, such as mechanical requirements for large contraction ratio in linear actuation, and functional features like water-proof, heat resistance, or UV protection, etc. Researchers have been addressing these problems by designing new types of actuators with better mechanical properties and achieving combined features by seeking composite materials and new fabrication methods. However, it greatly challenges the design and complicates the manufacturing process. In this work, we designed an origamic soft actuator with promising mechanical properties and propose a versatile approach to acquire various combined properties on this kind of actuator without complex manufacturing and redesign process. The origamic actuator has large output force and large contraction ratio (70%), making it promising for elongation-related applications. Additional properties could be achieved by attaching different planar materials outside. The origamic planar structure makes it easy for separated realization of functionalities by layer stacking, greatly lowering the difficulty of developing soft actuators with various properties demands. We experimentally demonstrated the mechanical advantages of the origamic actuators and the effectiveness of the layer stacking strategy by attaching heat resistance sheet onto a 3D printed origamic actuator to slow down the heat dissipation process.