Pneumatic balloon actuator with tunable bending points

Abstract

We propose a pneumatic balloon actuator capable of controlling its bending points. Local stiffness of the balloon actuator can be controlled by embedding low-melting-point-alloy that becomes solid by cooling. The bending points can be changed depending on the position of the melted low-melting-point-alloy since the pneumatic actuator bends at soft point. The advantage of our actuator is that its bending point can be simply controlled without changing the design of the whole device. We believe that the proposed actuation mechanism will be useful in designing highly flexible actuators for soft robotics.