Design of a Prototype of a Ferrofluid Based Soft Actuator

A ferrrofluid based soft actuator which shows various vertical motions has been introduced for the first time in this paper. The flexibility as well as the potential of the prototype designed, is tested in this study. The soft actuator used here is made by injecting ferrofluid inside a soft and thin rubber tube. The system also consists of some electromagnets placed at different positions along the side of the tube, whose magnetic field intensity is controlled by changing the duty cycle of the input voltage supplied to the electromagnets. The position of the coils as well as the input voltage are varied during the experiment which created various vertical motions of the ferrofluid tube. The simple design of the prototype described in this paper made this system more cost effective and easy to configure.