Soft compact valve inducing self-excited vibration and its application for a mobile robot

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a new valve that switches the pressurized modes by self-excited vibration instead of using electricity. Recently pneumatic soft robots are developed actively which can move narrow environments by taking advantage of its flexibility. Generally, solenoid valves are used to drive pneumatic soft robots, but they are hard to be used in environments where explosion-proof performance is required such as a chemical plant. Therefore, we developed a new valve and checked its function by experiments. Then we show the effectiveness of our method by realizing the propulsion of a pneumatic mobile robot in which installed the valve.