Hydrogel-based soft pneumatic bending actuator with self-healing and proprioception capabilities

Abstract

Proprioception is a necessary skill in robots and especially complicated in soft robots. It is commonly achieved by adding an external complement to the robotic structure that acts as a sensor. In this work, we present an approach in which the material itself (a cationic network hydrogel) serves as a structure and as a curvature sensor in a soft pneumatic bending actuator. The experiments carried out validate the use of the resistive strain capacity of our hydrogel as a proprioceptive sensor. We believe that this sensing capacity, together with the high stretchability and self-healing capability of our material makes our approach an interesting alternative for the development of soft actuators.