Soft robotics literature review 1) Soft Robotics for Chemists
Research group: Harvard University. Journal: Journal: Angewandte Chemie, 2011. Category: Category: Actuator design. Summary: This paper discusses the design and fabrication of a Pneumatic actuator. It is a soft actuator able to produce an angular displacement. This actuator is widely used for many soft robotics applications requiring a circular motion or bending. This paper discusses the design and fabrication of the actuator. Since this paper is viewing this problem from a material engineering perspective, so it studies the effect of the different material on the performance of the actuator. This paper also contributes toward characterisation of the Pneumatic actuators.
2) Pneumatic Networks for Soft Robotics that Actuate Rapidly Research group: Harvard University. Journal: Journal: Advanced Functional Materials, 2014. Category: Category: Actuator design and improvement. improvement. Summary: This paper proposes some modification to the original design of Pneumatic actuators to make them actuate at a higher speed. The modified design can achieve full bending in as low as 50ms and can be operated at a frequency of 4Hz. This modification of design also increases the life cycle of the design, and it is claimed in the paper to be able to withstand greater than million repeated cycle of actuation. This paper shows that the modified design is highly suitable in cases when actuation is required at a higher rate.
3) Hand Rehabilitation using Soft-Robotics ˜
Research group: Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT, USA and Department of Mechanical Engineering, Engineering, UTEC, Peru. Conference: Conference: 6th IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics Biomechatronics (BioRob), 2016 Category: Category: Fabrication and control (statistical, model free). Summary: Summary: This paper discusses the fabrication and control of a soft robot for hand rehabilitation. rehabilitation. It uses a Pneumatic actuator to help the patient in doing hand exercise. This paper discusses the fabrication of the actuator briefly and propose a statistical model to control the actuator. actuator. This paper shows that by adjusting the dimensions of pneumatic actuators, a linear relation between pressure and actuation can be achieved.
Improvements: This system uses very simple exercises involving only one finger, more complicated exercises can be achieved. The device also have a short lifetime.
4) Towards a Soft Pneumatic Glove for Hand Rehabilitation
Research group: Harvard University. Conference: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2013. Category: Fabrication and characterisation. Summary: This paper presents a design of a soft robotic glove to be used in hand rehabilitation exercises. The robot consists of pneumatic actuators. Each actuator controls the motion of a single finger of hand. In addition to rehabilitation, this glove can also be used as a gripper. This paper discusses the mechanical analysis of the actuators using Finite element model (FEM) and describe the fabrication process of the actuators. The glove is characterised by deformation, force and pressure relationship. Improvements: This paper only focuses on fabrication and characterisation of the Glove. As a future this can be treated as distributed system problem, each finger of the glove can be controlled individually and can mimic the complex motion of hand.
5) Universal soft pneumatic robotic gripper with variable effective length
Research group: School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang university, Beijing. Conference: Proceedings of the 35th Chinese Control Conference, 2016. Category: Fabrication and characterisation. Summary: This paper discusses the fabrication of a soft robotic gripper and propose a scheme to characterise the gripper. The proposed gripper contain four fingers. Each finger is a pneumatic actuator with variable length effect . This paper studies the relation between actuator size, object size, actuation pressure and pull off force. The paper presents some interesting relations between parameters of actuators. Improvements: This paper mostly discusses fabrication and characterisation of a soft gripper but does not discuss the control and precision of such a gripper. As a future work, the behaviour of gripper can be modelled.
6) A Compliant Hand Based on a Novel Pneumatic Actuator
Research group: Robotics and Biology Laboratory, Technische Unverisitat Berlin. Conference: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2013. Category: Fabrication. Summary: This paper presents a robotic hand. Pneumatic actuators are used to act as a finger. The pneumatic actuators are slightly modified to obtain superior performance. This paper discussed the design and fabrication part in detail and studied the effect of object size on the force provided by the hand. This paper also investigated the precision of the proposed robotic hand and its ability to grasp different objects. Improvements: This paper also employs very simple control technique; all fingers are following same control signal. The more complicated controller can be used to mimic a human hand.
7) Human-Compliant Body-attached Soft Robots Toward Automatic Cooperative Ultrasound Imaging
Research group: Department of Biomedical Engineering, NUS, Singapore. Conference: IEEE 20th International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design, 2016. Category: Fabrication. Summary: This paper presents a portable soft robot to help the physician in performing an ultrasound. The paper discusses the superiority of using soft robot over already presents rigid robots for ultrasound purposes. This paper presents a design of the portable robot and discusses its fabrication process. This paper uses an actuator similar to pneumatic muscle but with slight improvements. The presented system is shown to have better performance.
8) Model-free control framework for multi-limb soft robots
Research group: Neuromechanics and Biomimetics Lab, Tufts University, USA and Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Cambridge. Conference: IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2015. Category: control (graph based, model free). Summary: This paper mainly focuses on developing a model-free control technique for soft robotics systems. This paper presents a control method based on the graph. The graph consists of all possible actuator states. Each action of the robot has a corresponding path on the graph. This paper shows the validity of the controller by performing an experiment on three limb robot. Improvements: This paper only discusses the application of the control algorithm for very simple motions. The validity of the algorithm can be tested for a more complicated motion of the soft robot.
9) Measurement and Modelling of McKibben Pneumatic Artificial Muscles
Research group: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, USA. Conference: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION, 1996. Category: actuator design and mathematical modelling. Summary: This paper describes the design and modelling of a Pneumatic artificial Pneumatic muscles. These muscles are used in soft robotics as a linear actuators. This paper provides mathematical model based on the geometry of muscle and mechanics of the muscle. This paper also presents a model of the pneumatic system used for actuation. Experimental results are presented to analyse the working of the artificial muscle. This paper also analysed energy efficiency of the system and presented differences between artificial and actual human muscle.
10) Analytical Modelling and Experimental Validation of the Braided Pneumatic Muscle
Research group: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ottawa, Canada. Conference: IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTIC, 2009. Category: actuator design and mathematical modelling. Summary: This paper similar to previous paper. This paper presents a more generalised mathematical model of the artificial pneumatic muscles based on mechanical and geometric properties of the muscle. This paper present experimental results to verify that the presented mathematical model is accurate.
11) Modelling of the McKibben artificial muscle: A review
Research group: Electrical Engineering Department, INSA, University of Toulouse, France. Journal: Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, 2012. Category: actuator design and mathematical modelling. Summary: This paper presents a review about the Pneumatic artificial muscles and gives a detailed analysis about modelling and working of the muscle. This paper tries to overcome some problem with the mathematical model by considering some suppositions which are only ideally true and plays a role in practical cases. This paper also studies the hysteresis effect in the pneumatic muscle and attribute this behaviour to the frictional effects between threads of outer sheath. This paper proposes that more accurate modelling is possible by including textile physics into the model.
12) Reconsidering the McKibben muscle: Energetics, operating fluid, and bladder material
Research group: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, USA and Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, NC State University, USA. Journal: Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, 2014. Category: actuator design. Summary: This paper discusses about the mechanical and material properties of pneumatic artificial muscles in detail. This paper analysed about the pressure distribution mechanism and studied the fluid dynamic effects in the system. This paper also analysed the effect of changing material properties on the efficiency of the muscle and developed a model to predict relate the efficiency of the system to mechanical, geometrical and pneumatic properties of the system.
