Development of a Novel Six DOF Soft Parallel Robot

While soft robotics is an emerging field of research, soft parallel robots are among the latest advancements in this field. Usually, soft robots consist of serial soft arms and structure which provides high degrees of freedom and maneuverability. However, soft serial arms suffer from issues such as low stiffness and limited payload which limits their application. On the other hand, soft parallel robots can address these issues by providing more control on the overall stiffness and the payload of the robot. This paper reports on the design, modeling, and fabrication of a novel six degrees of freedom (DOF) soft parallel robot. The robot consists of six soft closed kinematic chains that connect the moving platform to the fixed base and provide six DOF (x, y, z, roll, pitch, yaw). Each kinematic chain incorporates an active soft link and a passive link which are integrated to the platform through soft spherical. The robot prototype is 3D printed using NINJA flex and PLA and actuated with six tendon driven soft actuators. The nonlinear kinematics of the robot is derived and simulated for different trajectories using Matlab. Moreover, the Matlab Simscape model is created to obtain the dynamical response of the mechanism for various inputs. The robot model is validated through the experimental setup using a six DOF electromagnetic position sensor. The proposed soft robot is lightweight and efficient and can be used safely as a cooperative robot in different industries such as the packaging and medical industry.