Building Soft Muscles for Robots

Interns

Courtney Duong, Nick Kamenica, Edgar Hernandez Mendoza

Project Description

Soft robots, unlike typical robots, perform well in uncontrolled and unstructured environments, such as in archaeological dig sites, in space, and even in the human body, because of their dynamic nature. For example, the Hawkes Lab created a vine robot which could maneuver through labyrinthine environments by growing like vines. However, this technology is fairly new with the large majority of innovations made in the past ten years. Because of this, it's an area of active research, making their integration into everyday life difficult. We produced different lengths of artificial muscles (made of plastic tubes and zip ties) strung together and inflated them with pressurized air to find the best length for maximum contraction. The string of artificial muscles with maximal contraction in turn produced the smallest bending radius for the soft robot; a smaller bending radius enables the robot to make tighter turns. We found that the ideal length of each artificial muscle was 2 inches. Our results provide a replicable model for use in further soft robotics applications.

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