BPActuators: Lightweight and Low-Cost Soft Actuators by Balloons and Plastics

To increase the awareness and impact, soft robotics needs to go beyond the lab environment and should be readily accessible to those even with no robotic expertise. However, most prevailing manufacturing technologies require either professional equipment or materials which usually are not available to common people, thereby constraining the accessibility. In this communication, we propose a lightweight and low-cost soft bending actuator, called "BPActuator", that can be easily manufactured with Balloons and Plastics. For characterization, we fabricated a range of actuators with different morphology and tested in terms of the capability of deformation and load-bearing. We demonstrated that they can bend up to 35 degrees and exert force at the tip around 0.070±0.015N, which is over 5 times higher than their average gravity. We further implemented a gripper of three fingers using BPActuators, and found that the gripper can realize humanlike grasp of a range of daily objects. The gripper can lift objects at least 8 times heavier than its own weight. Moreover, BPActuators are cost effective and each costs about 0.22USD. Given all the advantages, we believe that the BPActuators will significantly improve the accessibility of soft robotics.