SOFT ROBOTIC HAND

WITH EMBEDDED ACTUATORS AND SENSORS

MUKESH KUMAR ROUT Characteristics of a successful finger: A

successful finger body design must satisfy the
Department of Industrial Design, NIT Rourkela
following requirements:
Mail Id: 215ID1180@nitrkl.ac.in (1) it must retain the position of SMA strips and
Now a days the application of artificial neural network flexure sensor;
technique in the automation industry has provided high (2) it has a sufficient structural flexibility and little
flexibility and safety for human operators. In my work I resistance
have done research upon the design and fabrication
force for SMA strips to bend;
process of a fully integrated soft humanoid robotic hand
with five finger that integrate an embedded shape memory (3) it must thermally isolate the actuation SMA
alloy (SMA) actuator and a piezoelectric transducer (PZT) strip and the
flexure sensor. Several challenges that are exercised in shape recovery SMA strip;
this design includes precise control of the SMA actuator, (4) it has decent heat dissipation; and
improving power efficiency, and reducing actuation current (5) it must be compact in size with a humanoid
and response time have been addressed. First of all , a Ni-
finger shape.
Ti SMA strip is pretrained to a circular shape. Second, it is
wrapped
Keywords:with a Ni-Cr
sensors resistance
and actuators wire
, soft that hand
robotic is coated with
thermally conductive and electrically isolating material.
Introduction- In robotic grasping, it is desirable to have
a robotic gripper that has variable stiffness. Common
methods for tunable or variable stiffness include pneumatic
or hydraulic particle jamming , layer jamming ,
Figure 3: Full integrated soft robotic finger
magnetorheological fluids or electrorheological fluids ,
motors with variable springs , electroactive polymer as well
as SMP , etc. Besides these methods, recent study has
reported tunable stiffness composite embedded with low
melting-point Fields metal strip or SMP as thermally
activated layer and liquid-phase Galinstan heater , or
composite
Figure combined
1:The coating of process
and winding rigid of low-melting-point-alloy
the SMA strip andthe
resistance wire
microstructure embedded in soft poly dimethylsiloxane.

Figure 4: parameter and circuit efficiency of actuator design

SMA ACTUATOR DESIGN-

1. Ni-Ti Alloy is selected to be the suitable type of SMA due
to its superiority to other types of SMA in many aspects,
including relatively large strain (6% maximum shape
memory strain), high power density (25 times electric
motors), and small Youngs modulus at low
temperatures (2841 Gpa).
2. An SMA strip can return fully to its original shape when
no resistance force is applied. However, for the robotic
finger design, the resistance
force from silicon rubber finger body and the flexure
sensor prevents full recovery.
3. To improve the shape recovery rate, a half width SMA
strip that is trained in the opposite bending direction is
used. This design can achieve nearly 100% shape
recovery, i.e., return the finger close to a straight
position.
Figure 2: 3D printed mold parts and complete assembled mold
Department
National Institute of Technology Rourkela
Conclusion: The design and fabrication process of an
integrated soft robotic
hand is presented in this paper. The finger design features
actuators made of SMA strips for actuation and shape recovery,
flexure sensor for shape feedback, a Ni-Cr resistance wire for
thermal stimulus of SMA actuators. The fabrication process takes
advantage of several emerging RP technologies including soft
material making, molding, laser cutting, and 3D printing. All
components including actuators, sensors, and wires are
embedded into a single body without any assembly. The result is
a light weight, robust, low cost, and fully integrated robotic hand
that outputs a large grasping force with low input power.
References:
[1] Trivedi, D., Rahn, C. D., Kier, W. M., and Walker, I. D., 2008,
Soft Robotics:
Biological Inspiration, State of the Art, and Future Research,
Appl. Bionics
Biomech.,5(3), pp 99-117.
[2] Cho, K.-J., Koh, J.-S., Kim, S., Chu, W.-S., Hong, Y., and Ahn, S.-
H., 2009,
Review of Manufacturing Processes for Soft Biomimetic Robots,
ofManuf.,
Int. J. Precis. Eng. Industrial Design
10(3), pp. 171181