Soft Robotics: Fiber Reinforced Soft Pneumatic Multidirectional Manipulators, Designing, Fabricating, and Testin

Traditional robots are made from hard materials like hard plastic or metal and consist of regular rigid mechanical parts. Using those parts has some limitations, like limited dexterity and lack of flexibility. Some of these limitations could be avoided through using a compliant material, because it has higher flexibility and dexterity. It is also safer to be in direct contact with humans. This thesis studies soft pneumatic manipulators (SPMs) that move in multi degrees of freedom (MDOF), which makes them able to perform various functions. The study will include designing, fabricating, and testing three different SPMs with different taper angles -- 00, 1 0, and 20 -- degree to measure the effect of varying this geometry on the achievable force by the end effector and the range of bending and elongation. Every single SPM consists of three soft pneumatic chambers to reach unlimited points on its workspace through implementing bending and elongating movements. There are a lot of applications for this kind of soft actuators, like rehabilitation, underwater utilizes, and robots for surgery and rescues. Most soft pneumatic actuators provide one kind of movement, for bending, twisting, or elongating. Combining more than one kind of movement in one soft pneumatic actuator provides considerable contributions to the body of research. The SPMs were controlled and tested to evaluate the achieved force and two kinds of movement, bending and elongating range. The results of each module has been compared with the others to determine which actuator has the best performance. Then a force controller was created to maintain the desired force that was achieved by the end effector. The results indicated that the optimal angle of the SPM was 20 degree.