Hook-Shaped Bending and S-Shaped Bending of Soft Robotic Arm

Abstract

Soft robotic arm is an emerging research field. It has an extensive application prospect because of its soft body and theoretically infinite degrees of freedom. However, the general soft robotic arm of pneumatic actuator only researched arc-shaped bending. It limits the application environment of the soft robotic arm. A new structure of soft robotic arm is presented in this paper. The entire soft robot arm was designed as a cylinder with two drive cavity segments. The section of each cavity segment was designed as two chambers. The soft robotic arm of this structure can achieve hook-shaped bending and S-shaped bending. It is verified by simulation that the soft robotic arm of this structure can bend after through a slit and it also can operate across obstacles. These three bending structures expand the range of applications of a soft robotic arm and qualify it to operate in a complex and hostile environment.