Digital logic for soft devices
Digital logic for soft devices
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.1820672116
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发表时间：
2019-04-16
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Whitesides, George M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Preston, Daniel J.;Rothemund, Philipp;Whitesides, George M.
尽管软装置（抓取器、执行器和基本机器人）正迅速成为广泛的机器人领域的一个组成部分，但完全软装置的自主性才刚刚开始发展。传统控制系统对软装置的适应需要硬阀和电子控制。本文描述了完全软气动数字逻辑门，具有适合与电流（宏观）软执行器使用的物理刻度。每个数字逻辑门利用一个单双稳阀-气动等效的施密特触发器-依靠半球形膜的不稳定性来缠绕内部管，并以二进制高/低输入和输出压力进行操作。软，气动非，与，或数字逻辑门，其产生已知的气动输出作为一个或多个，气动输入的功能，允许制造数字逻辑电路的设置复位锁存器，两位移位寄存器，前沿检测器，数模转换器（DAC），和拨动开关。DAC和拨动开关，反过来，可以控制和驱动一个软执行器（演示使用气动网夹持器）。这些宏观软数字逻辑门可扩展到大容量的气流，在稳定状态下不消耗功率，并且可以重新配置以实现单一设计的多种功能（包括从环境和人类用户接收输入的配置）。这项工作代表了开发自主控制策略的一步-不涉及电子接口或硬组件-用于软设备。
Although soft devices (grippers, actuators, and elementary robots) are rapidly becoming an integral part of the broad field of robotics, autonomy for completely soft devices has only begun to be developed. Adaptation of conventional systems of control to soft devices requires hard valves and electronic controls. This paper describes completely soft pneumatic digital logic gates having a physical scale appropriate for use with current (macroscopic) soft actuators. Each digital logic gate utilizes a single bistable valve-the pneumatic equivalent of a Schmitt trigger-which relies on the snap-through instability of a hemispherical membrane to kink internal tubes and operates with binary high/low input and output pressures. Soft, pneumatic NOT, AND, and OR digital logic gates-which generate known pneumatic outputs as a function of one, or multiple, pneumatic inputs-allow fabrication of digital logic circuits for a set-reset latch, two-bit shift register, leading-edge detector, digital-to-analog converter (DAC), and toggle switch. The DAC and toggle switch, in turn, can control and power a soft actuator (demonstrated using a pneu-net gripper). These macroscale soft digital logic gates are scalable to high volumes of airflow, do not consume power at steady state, and can be reconfigured to achieve multiple functionalities from a single design (including configurations that receive inputs from the environment and from human users). This work represents a step toward a strategy to develop autonomous control-one not involving an electronic interface or hard components-for soft devices.