Development of a distributed actuation device consisting of soft gel actuator elements

Author

Tadokoro, Satoshi ; Fuji, Satoshi ; Fushimi, Mitsuaki ; Kanno, Ryu ; Kimura, Tetsuya ; Takamori, Toshi ; Oguro, Kersuke

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. & Syst. Eng., Kobe Univ., Japan

Volume

3

fYear

1998

fDate

16-20 May 1998

Firstpage

2155

Abstract

It is desirable that soft objects like organs are manipulated by soft actuation devices. This paper presents a newly developed device using a large number of actuator elements made of a soft gel material, which applies a distributed driving force on objects. The material used in the device is an ionic conducting polymer gel film and the structure of the elements is elliptical friction drive. Experimental results showed that an object placed on such a device could move at a speed of 0.62 mm/sec. This paper refers also to fundamental experiments and a concept for a more efficient drive

Keywords

actuators; gels; manipulators; polymer films; 0.62 mm/s; EFD; ICPF; distributed actuation device; elliptical friction drive; end-effectors; ionic conducting polymer gel film; manipulators; soft gel actuator elements; Actuators; Conducting materials; Conductive films; Drives; Food technology; Polymer films; Polymer gels; Robots; Robustness; Systems engineering and theory;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Robotics and Automation, 1998. Proceedings. 1998 IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Leuven

ISSN

1050-4729

Print_ISBN

0-7803-4300-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ROBOT.1998.680640

Filename

680640