Design And Experimental Research Of Soft Robotics Based On Origami Structure

At present,studies on soft robotics have received widespread attention worldwide,and it is an emerging hotspot and development frontier in robotics research.Compared with traditional rigid material robots,soft robots have the following advantages:they have high flexibility and safer interaction;their degrees of freedom are highly redundant;they can be greatly bent,twisted and stretched,and are suitable for many kinds of working environments.In recent years,soft robots based on origami structure have become an important research direction of soft robotics studies due to their good load capacity and environmental adaptability.Based on the origami structures,we design and develop three different types of origami structure soft robots,then conduct in-depth research on its design and manufacturing process,modeling and simulation analysis and control structure.The addition of origami structure design elements improves the controllability and functionality of soft robots.In response to the performance requirements of soft robots in different application scenarios,this paper designs and manufactures soft robots of different types of origami structures based on the bionic origami structure,functional origami structure,and self-folding origami structure,which respectively improve the environmental adaptability and driving efficiency of soft robot and realized the robot self-folding.Firstly,based on the bionic origami structure,we refer to the physiological structure of watermelon insects in nature,and then design and manufacture a pill bugs-like soft crawling robot with origami exoskeleton,which improves the environment adaptability of the soft crawling robot.Secondly,based on the Yoshimura origami structure,we design and fabricate a soft robot with a tubular origami structure,which improves the controllability and driving efficiency of the soft robot.Finally,based on the self-folding origami structure,we analyze the deformation mechanism of pneumatically deformable materials,design and manufacture a variety of self-folding soft robots.The specific research contents of this paper are as follows:(1)Based on the design idea of bionic origami structured soft robot,we refer to the physiological structure and movement form of pill bugs in nature,and then design the pill bugs soft crawling robot.Most of the soft crawling robot body is made of silicone rubber.The friction force between the silicone rubber material and other materials is large,and the surface of the pneumatic drive of the silicone rubber material is susceptible to damage and failure,which makes the soft crawler robot lack in environmental adaptability.With reference to the exoskeleton structure and movement form of pill bugs in nature,we design a multi-drive pill bugs-like soft robot with origami exoskeleton,which can reduce the frictional resistance of the surface of the soft robot and the environment,and the soft silicone rubber drive is protected from physical damage from the external environment.The soft robot is pneumatically driven,it has a variety of movement modes,and can well simulate the pill bugs crawling,steering and stress self-protection in complex environments.It has good environmental adaptability.(2)Based on the Yoshimura origami structure,we analyze the crease design of the Yoshimura origami structure in detail,and design a pneumatic soft robot with a tubular origami structure.Because of the super-elastic characteristics of soft materials,soft robots have large deformation capabilities,but the super-elastic characteristics of soft materials also lead to a certain lack of controllability and driving efficiency of soft robots.Based on the Yoshimura origami structure,we combine the design idea of the soft robot of the origami structure to design the pneumatic soft drive of the tubular origami structure.Firstly,we geometrically model and analyze the soft drive of the origami structure,and analyze its motion characteristics in detail.Secondly,for the designed origami structure soft driver,we made a physical origami structure soft driver,and experimented with the produced origami structure soft driver,and then verified its controllable performance improvement.Finally,we design and manufacture a soft crawling robot based on a tubular origami structure,and perform a creeping crawling experiment.The results show that the soft crawler robot based on the tubular origami structure has higher driving efficiency than the traditional peristaltic crawler robot.(3)Based on the design ideas of self-folding origami structure and self-assembly technology,we analyze the pneumatically driven bending structure in detail,and design self-folding soft robots that can use 2D materials to fold out 3D shapes.Firstly,we analyze the deformation of the material when the square airbag is inflated,and design the self-folding structure of the pneumatic hinge,and then conduct a detailed theoretical analysis of the self-folding mechanism of the structure.Secondly,we study the manufacturing process of pneumatic self-folding structure,and design and manufactures a variety of self-folding origami structure soft robots.Finally,we conducted a self-folding experiment on the self-folding soft robot,and compared with the results of other related self-folding robot research.The results show that,compared to self-folding structure robots that drive and design and manufacture materials such as shape memory alloy(SMA),shape memory polymer(SMP)and dielectric elastomer(DE),the self-folding structure design manufacturing mechanism is used to design and manufacture some self-folding soft robots that require weight and volume,which is faster and cheaper to manufacture.