TY - GEN
T1 - Active suction cup actuated by ElectroHydroDynamics phenomenon
AU - Kuwajima, Yu
AU - Shigemune, Hiroki
AU - Cacucciolo, Vito
AU - Cianchetti, Matteo
AU - Laschi, Cecilia
AU - Maeda, Shingo
N1 - Funding Information:
*This work was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI under Grant JP16K14202, JP16J07902 and Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Shibaura Institute of Technology Yu Kuwajima, Hiroki Shigemune and Shingo Maeda are with the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Shibaura Institute of Technology, 3-7-5 Toyosu Koto-ku, Tokyo 135-8548, Japan. (e-mail: ab13028@shibaura-it.ac.jp).
Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This work was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI under Grant 16H04291, JP16J07902 and TOBITATE! Young Ambassador Program.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IEEE.
PY - 2017/12/13
Y1 - 2017/12/13
N2 - Designing and manufacturing actuators using soft materials are among the most important subjects for future robotics. In nature, animals made by soft tissues such as the octopus have attracted the attention of the robotics community in the last years. Suckers (or suction cups) are one of the most important and peculiar organs of the octopus body, giving it the ability to apply high forces on the external environment. The integration of suction cups in soft robots can enhance their ability to manipulate objects and interact with the environment similarly to what the octopus does. However, artificial suction cups are currently actuated using fluid pressure so most of them require external compressors, which will greatly increase the size of the soft robot. In this work, we proposed the use of the ElectroHydroDynamics (EHD) principle to actuate a suction cup. EHD is a fluidic phenomenon coupled with electrochemical reaction that can induce pressure through the application of a high-intensity electric field. We succeeded in developing a suction cup driven by EHD keeping the whole structure extremely simple, fabricated by using a 3D printer and a cutting plotter. We can control the adhesion of the suction cup by controlling the direction of the fluidic flow in our EHD pump. Thanks to a symmetrical arrangement of the electrodes, composed by plates parallel to the direction of the channel, we can change the direction of the flow by changing the sign of the applied voltage. We obtained the pressure of 643 Pa in one unit of EHD pump and pressure of 1428 Pa in five units of EHD pump applying 6 kV. The suction cup actuator was able to hold and release a 2.86 g piece of paper. We propose the soft actuator driven by the EHD pump, and expand the possibility to miniaturize the size of soft robots.
AB - Designing and manufacturing actuators using soft materials are among the most important subjects for future robotics. In nature, animals made by soft tissues such as the octopus have attracted the attention of the robotics community in the last years. Suckers (or suction cups) are one of the most important and peculiar organs of the octopus body, giving it the ability to apply high forces on the external environment. The integration of suction cups in soft robots can enhance their ability to manipulate objects and interact with the environment similarly to what the octopus does. However, artificial suction cups are currently actuated using fluid pressure so most of them require external compressors, which will greatly increase the size of the soft robot. In this work, we proposed the use of the ElectroHydroDynamics (EHD) principle to actuate a suction cup. EHD is a fluidic phenomenon coupled with electrochemical reaction that can induce pressure through the application of a high-intensity electric field. We succeeded in developing a suction cup driven by EHD keeping the whole structure extremely simple, fabricated by using a 3D printer and a cutting plotter. We can control the adhesion of the suction cup by controlling the direction of the fluidic flow in our EHD pump. Thanks to a symmetrical arrangement of the electrodes, composed by plates parallel to the direction of the channel, we can change the direction of the flow by changing the sign of the applied voltage. We obtained the pressure of 643 Pa in one unit of EHD pump and pressure of 1428 Pa in five units of EHD pump applying 6 kV. The suction cup actuator was able to hold and release a 2.86 g piece of paper. We propose the soft actuator driven by the EHD pump, and expand the possibility to miniaturize the size of soft robots.
KW - EHD pump
KW - Planer electrode
KW - Suction cup actuator
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85041958847&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85041958847&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/IROS.2017.8202195
DO - 10.1109/IROS.2017.8202195
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85041958847
T3 - IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
SP - 470
EP - 475
BT - IROS 2017 - IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2017
Y2 - 24 September 2017 through 28 September 2017
ER -