Soft Grabbing Robots Driven by Electrohydrodynamic Fiber Pumps

In this paper, we present a tubular flexible fiber pump using the principle of electrohydrodynamic. Our pumps consist of helical coil electrodes embedded in the walls of silicone tubes, which generate flow and pressure through electrohydrodynamic charge injection at high DC pressures. The fiber pump can produce a maximum pressure of 0.8 kilopascals of pressure per centimeter and a flow rate of nearly 40 milliliters per minute. Then, we integrated the fiber pump into soft grabbing robots made of artificial muscle to achieve the grasping function. Therefore, our fiber pumps are promising for acting as an actuator in the development of soft robots.