3D Printed Soft Pneumatic Bending Sensing Chambers for Bilateral and Remote Control of Soft Robotic Systems

Abstract

This work reports on soft pneumatic bending sensing chambers that are directly 3D printed without requiring any support material and postprocessing using a low-cost and open-source fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printer and a commercially available soft thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). These bending sensing chambers have multiple advantages including very fast response to any change in their internal volume, linearity, negligible hysteresis, repeatability, reliability, stability over time, long lifetime and very low power consumption. The performance of these soft sensing chambers is accurately predicted and optimized using finite element modeling (FEM) and a hyperelastic material model for the TPU used for 3D printing. The soft sensing chambers are tailored to several soft robotic applications such as bending sensors for bilateral control of soft robotic fingers and structures and soft wearable gloves for remote control of soft monolithic robotic fingers and adaptive grippers.