Soft pneumatic gelatin actuator for edible robotics
Jun Shintake, Harshal Sonar, Egor Piskarev, Jamie Paik, Dario Floreano
Abstract
We present a fully edible pneumatic actuator based on gelatin-glycerol material. The actuator is monolithic, fabricated via a molding process, and measures 90 mm in length, 20 mm in width, and 17 mm in thickness. Thanks to the material mechanical characteristics similar to those of silicone elastomers, the actuator exhibits a bending angle of 170.3 ° and a blocked force of 0.34 N at the applied pressure of 25 kPa. These values are comparable to elastomer based pneumatic actuators. As a validation example, two actuators are integrated to form a gripper capable of handling various objects, highlighting the high performance and applicability of the edible actuator. These edible actuators, combined with other recent edible materials and electronics, could lay the foundation for a new type of edible robots.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2017_softpneumaticgel,
title = {Soft pneumatic gelatin actuator for edible robotics},
author = {Jun Shintake and Harshal Sonar and Egor Piskarev and Jamie Paik and Dario Floreano},
booktitle = {IROS 2017},
year = {2017}
}