Soft manipulator using thin McKibben actuator

Abstract

This paper introduces the development of a continuously deformable body driven using the McKibben's muscles as a soft manipulator. The structure is inspired by the snake body structure using a redundant arrangement of the thin McKibben actuator without rotational joints. The robot structure is built using 32 cm thin bendable plastic plate and four thin muscles at two sides of the body. The thin muscles are made of silicone tubes with 1.3 mm outer diameter. The system constructs a flexible mechanism which using the actuators performs various types of motions. The manipulator was tested with sixteen inputs for bending motions and the system response was modeled by fitting a surface on the experimental data for three input pressure. Every phase of the bending body and motions were captured for analysis of the robot's movement using Tracker™ software. The robot successfully demonstrates smooth snake-like motions with different time delays and performs pick and place experiment.