A pneumatic random-access memory for controlling soft robots.
A pneumatic random-access memory for controlling soft robots.
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pone.0254524
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Grover WH
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hoang S;Karydis K;Brisk P;Grover WH
气动驱动的柔性机器人在许多应用中具有传统刚性机器人无法比拟的优势。特别是，它们灵活的身体和温和的气动运动使它们更适合在人类和其他可能被传统机器人伤害或损坏的物体周围使用。然而，用于控制软机器人的现有系统目前需要专用的机电硬件（通常是电磁阀）来维持每个独立致动器的致动状态（膨胀或收缩）。当与功率、计算和传感组件结合时，这种控制硬件会给机器人增加相当大的成本、尺寸和功率需求，从而限制了软机器人在许多重要应用领域的可行性。在这项工作中，我们介绍了一种气动存储器，使用空气（而不是电力）来设置和保持大量的软机器人执行器的状态，而无需专用的机电硬件。这些气动逻辑电路使用常闭微流体阀作为类似晶体管的元件;这使我们的电路能够支持比常开阀更复杂的计算功能。我们展示了一个8位的非易失性随机存取气动存储器（RAM），可以保持多个致动器的状态，同时使用时分复用（TDM）的气动版本控制单个致动器和多个致动器，并设置致动器的任何中间位置使用气动版本的模数转换。我们对气动RAM进行了概念验证实验测试，用它来控制柔软的机器人手在钢琴键盘上演奏单个音符、和弦和歌曲。通过大幅减少控制气动软机器人中多个独立执行器所需的硬件数量，我们的气动RAM可以加速软机器人技术在广泛的重要应用领域的推广。
Pneumatically-actuated soft robots have advantages over traditional rigid robots in many applications. In particular, their flexible bodies and gentle air-powered movements make them more suitable for use around humans and other objects that could be injured or damaged by traditional robots. However, existing systems for controlling soft robots currently require dedicated electromechanical hardware (usually solenoid valves) to maintain the actuation state (expanded or contracted) of each independent actuator. When combined with power, computation, and sensing components, this control hardware adds considerable cost, size, and power demands to the robot, thereby limiting the feasibility of soft robots in many important application areas. In this work, we introduce a pneumatic memory that uses air (not electricity) to set and maintain the states of large numbers of soft robotic actuators without dedicated electromechanical hardware. These pneumatic logic circuits use normally-closed microfluidic valves as transistor-like elements; this enables our circuits to support more complex computational functions than those built from normally-open valves. We demonstrate an eight-bit nonvolatile random-access pneumatic memory (RAM) that can maintain the states of multiple actuators, control both individual actuators and multiple actuators simultaneously using a pneumatic version of time division multiplexing (TDM), and set actuators to any intermediate position using a pneumatic version of analog-to-digital conversion. We perform proof-of-concept experimental testing of our pneumatic RAM by using it to control soft robotic hands playing individual notes, chords, and songs on a piano keyboard. By dramatically reducing the amount of hardware required to control multiple independent actuators in pneumatic soft robots, our pneumatic RAM can accelerate the spread of soft robotic technologies to a wide range of important application areas.
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影响因子：
6.1
作者：
Haubert, Kathryn;Drier, Tracy;Beebe, David
通讯作者：
Beebe, David
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Mathies, RA
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通讯作者：
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Mathies, Richard A.