Dielectric elastomer fingers for versatile grasping and nimble pinching

Boneless soft robotic fingers cannot apply concentrated forces to pinch a delicate object. This letter reports a three-dimensional design of dielectric elastomer fingers with higher flexural stiffness and close to 90° voltage-controllable bending for object gripping and pinching. It makes use of ten...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lau, Gih-Keong, Heng, Kim-Rui, Ahmed, Anansa S., Shrestha, Milan
Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/83353
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/42565
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Boneless soft robotic fingers cannot apply concentrated forces to pinch a delicate object. This letter reports a three-dimensional design of dielectric elastomer fingers with higher flexural stiffness and close to 90° voltage-controllable bending for object gripping and pinching. It makes use of tension arch flexures to elevate a pre-stretched dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) into a roof shape and thus magnifies the tension-induced moment, 40 times higher than a flat DEA does, to bend a stiff base frame. Such fingers make normally close-grippers to lift a payload 8–9 times their weight. They also make normally open grippers that pinch a highly deformable raw egg yolk.