Kinematic Model and Numerical Evaluation of an Origami-Inspired Soft Pneumatic Actuator

Karina G. Velazquez-Flores, Ditzia S. Garcia-Morales, X. Yamile Sandoval-Castro, Eduardo Castillo-Castaneda, Annika Raatz

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

In recent years, origami structures have been gradually applied in fields not associated with art, such as robotics, aerospace, electronics, and bio-mechanics by using both, soft and hard materials. Furthermore, origami is a powerful design tool for achieving mechanical intelligence in Soft Robotics. Origami folding in combination with smart materials has been explored for constructing transformable mechanisms while simplifying designing, fabrication, and assembly, to yield compliance and exhibit soft body properties. This paper presents a pneumatic soft actuator with contraction motion actuated by negative pressure, which design is inspired by a variant of Yoshimura’s origami pattern. The main geometrical parameters according to the crease pattern, composed of 4 levels, are described. Moreover, we introduce a kinematic model based on a geometric representation of the i- th level of the actuator, considering that the contraction motion is homogeneous at each level. We derived an equation to describe the total displacement based on the sum of the contraction of the 4 levels. The kinematic model is numerically evaluated through FEM simulations to estimate its performance throughout the actuator’s range of motion. We exhibit a numerical evaluation considering no-homogeneous contraction in each level, finding an error of 2.6 % between both evaluations.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationNew Advances in Mechanisms, Transmissions and Applications - Proceedings of the 6th MeTrApp Conference, 2023
EditorsMed Amine Laribi, Carl A. Nelson, Marco Ceccarelli, Saïd Zeghloul
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media B.V.
Pages82-90
Number of pages9
ISBN (Print)9783031298141
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Externally publishedYes
Event6th IFToMM International Conference on Mechanisms, Transmissions, and Applications, MeTrApp 2023 - Poitiers, France
Duration: 24 May 202326 May 2023

Publication series

NameMechanisms and Machine Science
Volume124 MMS
ISSN (Print)2211-0984
ISSN (Electronic)2211-0992

Conference

Conference6th IFToMM International Conference on Mechanisms, Transmissions, and Applications, MeTrApp 2023
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityPoitiers
Period24/05/2326/05/23

Keywords

  • Contraction
  • FEM evaluation
  • Kinematic Model
  • Origami
  • Soft Pneumatic Actuator

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