Design and fabrication of silicone-based dielectric elastomer rolled actuators for soft robotic applications

In this work we present a new concept for scalable and tightly rolled dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA). The proposed solution is motivated by the need for designing soft, high energy density, and compact actuators for soft robotics and artificial muscle applications. Each rolled DEA is made starting from a 50 μm thin silicone film (Wacker Elastosil 2030) with flexible carbon-black based electrodes screen-printed on one side. Two of those printed films are first stacked and subsequently tightly rolled, leading to the final DEA design. At first, the systematic development of the rolled DEA concept is presented. Electrical and mechanical contacts are provided by off-the-shelf wire end ferrules. The roll manufacturing process is described subsequently. Finally, an experimental evaluation of mechanical and electrical characteristics of the developed DEAs is performed. Our measurements show a change of blocking force of 0.18 N under constant load conditions and we predict a stroke of 2.5% at 2 N.

[1]  Stefan Seelecke,et al.  Silicone based dielectric elastomer strip actuators coupled with nonlinear biasing elements for large actuation strains , 2018, Smart Materials and Structures.

[2]  Andreas M. Kunz,et al.  Dielectric Elastomer Spring Roll Actuators for a Portable Force Feedback Device , 2006, 2006 14th Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems.

[3]  Ujjaval Gupta,et al.  A soft robot capable of 2D mobility and self-sensing for obstacle detection and avoidance , 2018 .

[4]  Micah Hodgins,et al.  Characterization of screen-printed electrodes for dielectric elastomer (DE) membranes: influence of screen dimensions and electrode thickness on actuator performance , 2016, SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring.

[5]  S. Bauer,et al.  Energy minimization for self-organized structure formation and actuation , 2007 .

[6]  Thomas Levard,et al.  Core-free rolled actuators for Braille displays using P(VDF–TrFE–CFE) , 2012, Smart materials & structures.

[7]  Matteo Cianchetti,et al.  On Intrinsic Safety of Soft Robots , 2017, Front. Robot. AI.

[8]  Gabor Kovacs,et al.  Spring roll dielectric elastomer actuators for a portable force feedback glove , 2002 .

[9]  Dario Floreano,et al.  Biomimetic underwater robots based on dielectric elastomer actuators , 2016, 2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

[10]  Michael D. Grissom,et al.  Wound roll dielectric elastomer actuators: fabrication, analysis and experiments , 2005, 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[11]  Daniel M. Vogt,et al.  Compact Dielectric Elastomer Linear Actuators , 2018, Advanced Functional Materials.

[12]  Ujjaval Gupta,et al.  Soft robots based on dielectric elastomer actuators: a review , 2019, Smart Materials and Structures.

[13]  Rahimullah Sarban,et al.  A tubular dielectric elastomer actuator: Fabrication, characterization and active vibration isolation , 2011 .

[14]  J. Madden.  Chapter 2 – DIELECTRIC ELASTOMERS AS HIGH-PERFORMANCE ELECTROACTIVE POLYMERS , 2008 .

[15]  Hoa Phung,et al.  Multiple-Degrees-of-Freedom Dielectric Elastomer Actuators for Soft Printable Hexapod Robot , 2017 .

[16]  G. Whitesides.  Soft Robotics. , 2018, Angewandte Chemie.

[17]  G. Kovacs.  Arm Wrestling Robot Driven by Dielectric Elastomer Actuators , 2006, The First IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, 2006. BioRob 2006..

[18]  G. Lau,et al.  Lightweight mechanical amplifiers for rolled dielectric elastomer actuators and their integration with bio-inspired wing flappers , 2014 .