Anisotropic Soft Robots Based on 3D Printed Meso-Structured Materials: Design, Modeling by Homogenization and Simulation
Félix Vanneste, Olivier Goury, Jonàs Martínez, Sylvain Lefebvre, Herve Delingette, Christian Duriez
Abstract
In this letter, we propose to use new 3D-printed mesostructured materials to build soft robots and we present a modeling pipeline for design assistance and control. These meta-materials can be programmed before printing to target specific mechanical properties, in particular heterogeneous stiffness and anisotropic behaviour. Without changing the external shape, we show that using such meta-material can lead to a dramatic change in the kinematics of the robot. This highlights the importance of modeling. Therefore, to help the design and to control soft robots made of these meso-structured materials, we present a modeling method based on numerical homogenization and Finite Element Method (FEM) that captures the anisotropic deformations. The method is tested on a 3 axis parallel soft robot initially made of silicone. We demonstrate the change in kinematics when the robot is built with meso-structured materials and compare its behavior with modeling results.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2020_anisotropicsoftr,
title = {Anisotropic Soft Robots Based on 3D Printed Meso-Structured Materials: Design, Modeling by Homogenization and Simulation},
author = {Félix Vanneste and Olivier Goury and Jonàs Martínez and Sylvain Lefebvre and Herve Delingette and Christian Duriez},
booktitle = {RA-L 2020},
year = {2020}
}