Programmable Telescopic Soft Pneumatic Actuators for Deployable and Shape Morphing Soft Robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces Programmable Telescopic Soft Pneumatic Actuators (PTSPAs), a modular design enabling deployable and shape-morphing soft robots with customizable geometry and performance, demonstrated in a soft quadruped application.

Contribution

The work presents a parametric design framework for PTSPAs, allowing systematic exploration and customization of soft actuators for deployable and morphing structures.

Findings

Clear relationships between design parameters and actuator performance.

Successful deployment of PTSPAs in a soft quadruped robot.

Enhanced capabilities for confined space manipulation.

Abstract

Soft Robotics presents a rich canvas for free-form and continuum devices capable of exerting forces in any direction and transforming between arbitrary configurations. However, there is no current way to tractably and directly exploit the design freedom due to the curse of dimensionality. Parameterisable sets of designs offer a pathway towards tractable, modular soft robotics that appropriately harness the behavioural freeform of soft structures to create rich embodied behaviours. In this work, we present a parametrised class of soft actuators, Programmable Telescopic Soft Pneumatic Actuators (PTSPAs). PTSPAs expand axially on inflation for deployable structures and manipulation in challenging confined spaces. We introduce a parametric geometry generator to customise actuator models from high-level inputs, and explore the new design space through semi-automated experimentation and systematic exploration of key parameters. Using it we characterise the actuators' extension/bending, expansion, and stiffness and reveal clear relationships between key design parameters and performance. Finally we demonstrate the application of the actuators in a deployable soft quadruped whose legs deploy to walk, enabling automatic adaptation to confined spaces. PTSPAs present new design paradigm for deployable and shape morphing structures and wherever large length changes are required.