Design and Experiment of a Soft Pneumatic Actuator with Variable Stiffness by Magnetic-induced

doi:10.3901/JME.2023.03.001

Abstract

Abstract: The friendly human-computer interaction characteristics of the soft robot have a wide range of application prospects in the field of flexible crawling, biomedical. A magnetic and pneumatic soft actuator with fast, reversible stiffness capability is proposed for the defects of the soft robot "low stiffness". Based on the magnetorheological effect, the single-degree-of-freedom fiber reinforced magnetic soft actuator is designed as a matrix of magnetorheological elastomer. The soft actuator is manufactured by silica gel casting. The magnetic-force coupling model is constructed, and the stiffness response is analyzed in the magnetorheological elastomer. The test results on the developed stiffness test platform show that the effect of the soft actuator on the stiffness in the application of the air pressure and the magnetic field is independent, and the impact of the stiffness of the air pressure can be ignored, and the magnetic field strength increases to improve the stiffness of the actuator, which is up to about 40%. By performing an actuator end position control experiment, the results show that by exciting the effect of the magnetic field, the capacity of the actuator carries the load holding position can be increased by 1.4 times. There is a fast response to load and withdrawal. The adjustment response time is less than 1.5 s.

Key words: soft robot, variable stiffness, magnetorheological effect, pneumatic actuator

CLC Number:

TP242

LI Te, CUI Boyao, LIU Haibo, LI Yuxin, ZHANG Guoqing, ZENG Fanlian, WANG Yongqing. Design and Experiment of a Soft Pneumatic Actuator with Variable Stiffness by Magnetic-induced[J]. Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2023, 59(3): 1-12.

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