Tuning the Energy Landscape of Soft Robots for Fast and Strong Motion
Tuning the Energy Landscape of Soft Robots for Fast and Strong Motion
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DOI：
10.1109/icra40945.2020.9196737
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发表时间：
2020-05
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Jiefeng Sun;Brandon Tighe;Jianguo Zhao
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Jiefeng Sun;Brandon Tighe;Jianguo Zhao
与传统的刚性机器人相比，柔性机器人由于其固有的软体结构而显示出巨大的潜力。尽管近年来研究人员取得了巨大的进步，但现有的软机器人普遍存在一个主要问题：速度慢，力小。在这项工作中，我们的目标是通过积极设计软体的能量景观来解决这个问题：相对于机器人变形的总应变能。通过这样的策略，软机器人的动力学可以被调整为具有快速和强烈的运动。我们介绍了一个具有两种稳定状态的软模块的总体设计原理，该模块可以在外力作用下从一种状态快速切换到另一种状态。我们根据设计参数（例如，模块的初始形状）描述所需的触发（开关）力。然后，我们将软双稳态模块应用于开发快速和强大的软机器人，其触发力由软执行器-扭曲和卷曲执行器（TCA）产生。我们展示了一个柔软的抓手，它可以握住超过自己体重8倍的重量，以及一个柔软的跳跃机器人，它可以跳跃超过自己身体高度的5倍。我们设想我们的策略将克服软机器人的弱点，释放它们在各种应用中的潜力。
Soft robots demonstrate great potential compared with traditional rigid robots owing to their inherently soft body structures. Although researchers have made tremendous progress in recent years, existing soft robots are in general plagued by a main issue: slow speeds and small forces. In this work, we aim to address this issue by actively designing the energy landscape of the soft body: the total strain energy with respect to the robot’s deformation. With such a strategy, a soft robot’s dynamics can be tuned to have fast and strong motion. We introduce the general design principle using a soft module with two stable states that can rapidly switch from one state to the other under external forces. We characterize the required triggering (switching) force with respect to design parameters (e.g., the initial shape of the module). We then apply the soft bistable module to develop fast and strong soft robots, whose triggering forces are generated by a soft actuator – twisted-and-coiled actuator (TCA). We demonstrate a soft gripper that can hold weights more than 8 times its own weight, and a soft jumping robot that can jump more than 5 times its body height. We envision our strategies will overcome the weakness of soft robots to unleash their potential for diverse applications.