Soft pumps for robots and wearables (Conference Presentation)

Fluids functions range from thermal management in buildings to blood circulation in animals. To date the use of fluids in soft and wearable robots has been limited by the need for hard and noisy external pumps. Here we report soft pumps, a class of electrically-driven pumps with an entirely flexible or even stretchable body. These pumps rely on ElectroHydroDynamics, a solid-state mechanism that accelerates liquid molecules using electric fields, resulting in silent bi-directional operation. These elastomer pumps can be integrated into untethered soft robots, soft exoskeletons driven by fluidic muscles, and smart textiles with active temperature management.