Novel Design of a Soft Pump Driven by Super-Coiled Polymer Artificial Muscles

The widespread use of fluidic actuation for soft robots creates a high demand for soft pumps and compressors. However, current off-the-shelf pumps are usually rigid, noisy, and cumbersome. As a result, it is hard to integrate most commercial pumps into soft robotic systems, which restricts the auton...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) pp. 8789 - 8794
Main Authors Tse, Yu Alexander, Wong, Ki Wan, Yang, Yang, Wang, Michael Yu
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 24.10.2020
Subjects
Muscles
Performance evaluation
Polymers
Prototypes
Pumps
Soft robotics
Wearable computers
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Summary:The widespread use of fluidic actuation for soft robots creates a high demand for soft pumps and compressors. However, current off-the-shelf pumps are usually rigid, noisy, and cumbersome. As a result, it is hard to integrate most commercial pumps into soft robotic systems, which restricts the autonomy and portability of soft robots. This paper presents the novel design of a soft pump based on bellow structure and super-coiled polymer (SCP) artificial muscles. The pump is flexible, lightweight, modular, scalable, quiet, and low cost. The pumping mechanism and fabrication process of the proposed soft pump is demonstrated. A pump prototype is fabricated to verify the proposed design and characterize its performance. From the characterization results, the pump can reach an output flow rate of up to 54 ml/min and delivers pressure up to 2.63 kPa. The pump has potential applications in untethered soft robots and wearable devices.
ISSN:2153-0866
DOI:10.1109/IROS45743.2020.9341366