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Design of a Soft Pneumatic Actuator Finger with Self-strain Sensing

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Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10462))

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Abstract

Benefit from high compliance, lightweight and natural motion, soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) have shown great potential for using as fingers in robotic hands. Currently designed SPAs lack strain feedback, which limits their further applications. Soft fingers using SPAs require sensors embedded in their bodies for strain feedback, and most of the reported sensors used in SPAs are commercial products which suffer from low compliance, bulky volume and integration complexity. This work reports a SPA finger with self-strain sensing by integrating a SPA and a dielectric elastomer (DE) film capacitive strain sensor. The single-chamber with fiber reinforced SPA is chosen for bending motion. The DE film capacitive strain sensor is designed with a simple sandwiched structure which is easy-to-fabricate and thick enough for high compliance. The materials chosen to fabricate the SPA and the sensor are the same which helps to make the integration natural and closely bonded. The actuation response as well as sensing outputs are experimentally analyzed and results show that the sensing output change linearly with bending angles, which can be used for further position feedback control.

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Acknowledgments

This work was in part supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant No. 51622506, and the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality under grant 16JC1401000.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Yi-Dan Tao & Guo-Ying Gu

Authors
  1. Yi-Dan Tao
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  2. Guo-Ying Gu
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Correspondence to Guo-Ying Gu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    YongAn Huang

  2. School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Hao Wu

  3. Institute of Industrial Research, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

    Honghai Liu

  4. School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

    Zhouping Yin

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Tao, YD., Gu, GY. (2017). Design of a Soft Pneumatic Actuator Finger with Self-strain Sensing. In: Huang, Y., Wu, H., Liu, H., Yin, Z. (eds) Intelligent Robotics and Applications. ICIRA 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10462. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65289-4_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65289-4_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-65288-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65289-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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