3D printed Soft Extension Actuator

Soft robotics has been known for its compliant and deformable nature. In recent years, a surge of development in soft actuator has brought promising progress in the field of wearable device, surgical robot and industrial gripper. However, most of the adopted fabrication process require sophisticated and precise manual operation, which often leads to a substantial variability in quality. Therefore, this paper presents an optimized design of Soft Extension Actuator (SEA) by 3D printing technology. Having the weight of 48.04g, one single SEA is able to lift up 20 times heavier object with less than 100% of overall strain. The extension ratio reaches 600% at 70kPa. Lastly, the SEA is shown in a configuration for bidirectional bending as well as being configured with two hybrid grippers to showcase its ability to retrieve objects in tight spaces or reposition grippers for optimal grasping.