RESEARCH ARTICLE

Design and experiment of a novel pneumatic soft arm based on a deployable origami exoskeleton

  • Yuwang LIU , 1,2 ,
  • Wenping SHI 1,2,3 ,
  • Peng CHEN 1,2,4 ,
  • Yi YU 1,2,4 ,
  • Dongyang ZHANG 1,2 ,
  • Dongqi WANG 1,2
Expand
  • 1. State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China
  • 2. Institutes for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110169, China
  • 3. School of Mechanical Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110000, China
  • 4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
liuyuwang@sia.cn

Received date: 20 Jan 2023

Accepted date: 08 Oct 2023

Copyright

2023 Higher Education Press

Abstract

Soft arms have shown great application potential because of their flexibility and compliance in unstructured environments. However, soft arms made from soft materials exhibit limited cargo-loading capacity, which restricts their ability to manipulate objects. In this research, a novel soft arm was developed by coupling a rigid origami exoskeleton with soft airbags. The joint module of the soft arm was composed of a deployable origami exoskeleton and three soft airbags. The motion and load performance of the soft arm of the eight-joint module was tested. The developed soft arm withstood at least 5 kg of load during extension, contraction, and bending motions; exhibited bistable characteristics in both fully contracted and fully extended states; and achieved a bending angle of more than 240° and a contraction ratio of more than 300%. In addition, the high extension, contraction, bending, and torsional stiffnesses of the soft arm were experimentally demonstrated. A kinematic-based trajectory planning of the soft arm was performed to evaluate its error in repetitive motion. This work will provide new design ideas and methods for flexible manipulation applications of soft arms.

Cite this article

Yuwang LIU , Wenping SHI , Peng CHEN , Yi YU , Dongyang ZHANG , Dongqi WANG . Design and experiment of a novel pneumatic soft arm based on a deployable origami exoskeleton[J]. Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering, 2023 , 18(4) : 54 . DOI: 10.1007/s11465-023-0770-2

Nomenclature

FApplied force
hHalf the height of the waterbomb origami structure
iith joint module
kiCurvature of the ith joint module
Kα, Kβ, KχStiffnesses in the fully contracted, extended, and intermediate state, respectively
MTorque
OiPosition of the coordinate origin of the upper platform of the ith joint module
i1piColumn vector of the ith joint module positions
rRadius of the joint module
ii1RRotation matrix of the ith joint module
siArc length of the ith joint module
tThickness of the waterbomb origami structure
i1iTHomogeneous matrix of the ith joint module
xi, yi, ziX, Y, and Z coordinate values of the end of the ith joint module, respectively
Yi, ZiY- and Z-axis of the coordinate system at the end of the ith joint module, respectively
αBending angle of soft arm
βiRotation angle of the end of the ith joint module around Zi
μDesign angle of the origami pattern
λFolding angle of the waterbomb origami structure
ϕDisplacement of soft arm
φiDeflection angle of the ith joint module
χiRotation angle of the end of the ith joint module around Yi
δiRotation angle of the end of the ith joint module around Xi

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51975566, 61821005, and U1908214) and the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, CAS, China (Grant No. ZDBS-LY-JSC011).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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