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Soft Dielectric Elastomer Oscillators Driving Bioinspired Robots.

  • Henke EM 1 Biomimetics Lab, Auckland Bioengineering Institute, The University of Auckland , Auckland, New Zealand .
  • Schlatter S 3 Microsystems for Space Technologies Laboratory, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne , Lausanne, Switzerland .
  • Anderson IA 1 Biomimetics Lab, Auckland Bioengineering Institute, The University of Auckland , Auckland, New Zealand .
  • 2017-12-19
Published in:
  • Soft robotics. - 2017
artificial muscles
dielectric elastomer oscillator
dielectric elastomers
piezoresistive switching
Biomimetics
Elastomers
Equipment Design
Robotics
English Entirely soft robots with animal-like behavior and integrated artificial nervous systems will open up totally new perspectives and applications. To produce them, we must integrate control and actuation in the same soft structure. Soft actuators (e.g., pneumatic and hydraulic) exist but electronics are hard and stiff and remotely located. We present novel soft, electronics-free dielectric elastomer oscillators, which are able to drive bioinspired robots. As a demonstrator, we present a robot that mimics the crawling motion of the caterpillar, with an integrated artificial nervous system, soft actuators and without any conventional stiff electronic parts. Supplied with an external DC voltage, the robot autonomously generates all signals that are necessary to drive its dielectric elastomer actuators, and it translates an in-plane electromechanical oscillation into a crawling locomotion movement. Therefore, all functional and supporting parts are made of polymer materials and carbon. Besides the basic design of this first electronic-free, biomimetic robot, we present prospects to control the general behavior of such robots. The absence of conventional stiff electronics and the exclusive use of polymeric materials will provide a large step toward real animal-like robots, compliant human machine interfaces, and a new class of distributed, neuron-like internal control for robotic systems.
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  • English
Open access status
green
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https://sonar.ch/global/documents/20737
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