Implementation of the Biological Muscle Mechanism in HASEL Actuators to Leverage Electrohydraulic Principles and Create New Geometries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1) State of the art is sufficiently referenced and the literature gap on alternating geometries of HASEL actuators is properly highlighted.

2) Please perform spell check, as typos and grammar/syntax mistakes have been identified (e.g. line 95 "free stain", "maximum stain", line 99 "can be name", line 102 "to leveraging", line 254 "we can established", line 250 "we will analysis", line 259 "known as our forces", line 280 "if we analysis"), sentence fragmentations (line 100 "design. While the..."), repetitions (line 104 "hindering...hindering... that hinder...", line 252 "associated with... associated with..."), wrong reference formatting (line 256 "(Guru, #13)")

3) All pen-drawn figures (7, 8, 10, 12) must be remade in full-digital for improving presentation quality and increasing readability.

4) Fluid mechanics are primary/secondary force-strain are compared and presented with clarity.

5) Fig. 13 (b) is not clear, please consider adding a higher resolution photo or a digital figure, since it serves as a representaton.

6) FEM properties used for the muscle simulations are adequately presented and the need for having multiple electrodes to represent the varying capacitance is addressed, although no contributions are made on the zipping mechanism modeling.

7) 3.1.1 provides no new information on the aforementioned geometric strain analysis in Fluid mechanics and should be removed.

8) Commentary on simulated results regarding tangential and normal force analysis is sufficient.

9) line 291 "Highly controlled system" this is an abstract characterization and should be avoided or theoretically supported.

10) Please provide more information on the failure to reach the full theoretical "free strain".Fig.22 presents a mitigation, but only for the zipping mechanism. This is a major shortcoming, especially due to the fact that no experimental evaluations are provided to provide more insights on the real actuator properties, which decreases the technical contribution of this article.

11) Please highlight in what ways the claim "... determining fabrication methods and providing an affordable supply source that meets the requirements of our sliding mechanism design" included in the contribution paragraph is addressed by the findings and analyze that steps are remaining for this challenged to be mitigated by using the proposed approach.

Author Response

Please see attachments

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting paper presenting a new biological actuator. The work is interesting, I have a few minor comments and suggestions for the paper. These are:

• In the introduction the different actuators are presented, this includes 5 figures for one paragraph of text. This section could do with a bit more information, as the paragraph just skims the information rather than going into detail. Could do with adding more quantitative information into the introduction. Pull voltages required, mass lifted etc.
• through out the paper the word stain is used, where I think it should be strain, please check this, including lines 95, 165
• Line 111 please define electrode coverage
• Why are some of the figures hand drawn, I thought the convention now is to electronically draw them, as that makes them look more professional
• Figure 12 is hand drawn and it is not so easy to read all the text, would be better if it was digitally drawn
• Line 217, surely these experiments have been done, and therefore should be in past tense
• Line 254, should this be equation 9
• line 256, is a reference missing here?
• Line 259 please check whether you mean equation 11 and 12
• is equation 13 the same as the one earlier? If so do you really need to repeat it?
• Can you check the labelling on Figure 20b, as the text and the figure don't seem to match up.
• Line 403, please can you check as I don't think it makes sense

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have sufficiently addressed my comments.