Design, Characterization, and Mechanical Programming of Fabric-Reinforced Textile Actuators for a Soft Robotic Hand

In this paper, we present the design, fabrication, and evaluation of robust, fabric-reinforced textile actuators, which are capable of performing a variety and combination of motions, such as axial extension, radial expansion, bending, and twisting along its central axis. A simple fabrication procedure using a combination of lamination and sewing is described. The relationship between the fabric reinforcement characteristics and the actuator deformation is studied and experimentally verified. Multi-segment actuators can be created by tailoring different sections of fabric-reinforcements together in order to generate combination of motions to perform specific tasks. We demonstrate this by designing an anthropomorphic soft robotic hand and providing preliminary evaluations on grasping daily living objects of various size and shapes.