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Design and Experiments of an Origami-Inspired Pneumatic Flexible Manipulator

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Abstract

Unlike traditional manipulators with high rigidity and limited degrees of freedom, pneumatic manipulators have significant superiorities such as flexibility, lightweight and cleanliness, and therefore, have been one of the most popular research directions in robotics. However, most existing pneumatic manipulators have disadvantages such as low rigidity and simple functionality. In order to make up for the shortcomings of existing pneumatic manipulators, this paper proposes a new pneumatic flexible manipulator inspired by the concept of origami, which realizes the combination and balance of flexibility and rigidity. Finite element analysis is conducted to study influences of the number of airbags, the angle of main beam, and the width of main beam on the performance of the flexible manipulator. The simulation results are utilized to optimize the structure of the flexible manipulator. A pneumatic control system is designed to realize the automatic control of the pneumatic flexible manipulator. At the same time, a prototype is 3D printed, the experimental platform for pneumatic deformation is built, and the verification experiments of the single-jaw manipulator and the three-jaw manipulator are completed.

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Data availability

Data and materials are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China (12002032).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Laboratory of Lightweight Multi-Functional Composite Materials and Structures, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Benzhu Guo, Panding Wang, Zeang Zhao, Shengyu Duan & Hongshuai Lei

Authors
  1. Benzhu Guo
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  2. Panding Wang
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  3. Zeang Zhao
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  4. Shengyu Duan
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  5. Hongshuai Lei
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Contributions

BG contributed to investigation, methodology, writing—original draft. PW contributed to investigation, visualization. ZZ contributed to conceptualization, methodology, writing—review and editing. SD contributed to visualization, experiments. HL contributed to supervision, conceptualization.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zeang Zhao or Shengyu Duan.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Guo, B., Wang, P., Zhao, Z. et al. Design and Experiments of an Origami-Inspired Pneumatic Flexible Manipulator. Acta Mech. Solida Sin. 36, 254–261 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10338-022-00376-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10338-022-00376-7

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