Soft Acuator Takes Advantage of Instabilites

Soft Acuator Takes Advantage of Instabilites
Aug-22-15
A new soft actuator developed by a team at Harvard uses a unique arrangement of segments to trigger quick changes in size and shape without much change in volume.

Typically, soft robots use fluidic actuators to control their movements, but these actuators can be bulky and often need to be tethered. In contrast, the actuators created by the Harvard team (inspired by a famous experiment involving a pair of balloons) are made up of fluidic segments that are connected in a way that allow quick movements, such as a sudden increase in length, to be triggered with small changes in volume. These quick actions, called snap-through instabilities, were analyzed by the team to determine how they could be controlled and predicted.

The harnesses of instabilities in engineering is remarkable in itself. "Engineers have long avoided instability because it so often represents failure," said Katia Bertoldi, the lead researcher on the project. "It's remarkable that instability itself has provided a way to improve and push the field of soft actuators forward."

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[CO.UK]
[SEAS.HARVARD.EDU]
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