This paper focuses on the recent development of soft pneumatic actuators for soft robotics over the past few years, concentrating on the following four categories: control systems, material and construction, modeling, and sensors. This review work se...
This paper presents an improved method for the non-inertial dynamic analysis of the 3-SPS/U parallel platform (3-SPS/U PM), employing the screw theory and Kane’s method, where S, P, and U denote spherical, prismatic, and universal joints, respe...
Mechanical vibrational energy, which is provided by continuous or discontinuous motion, is an infinite source of energy that may be found anywhere. This source may be utilized to generate electricity to replenish batteries or directly power electrica...
This paper presents a review of electrothermal micro-actuators and applications. Electrothermal micro-actuators have been a significant research interest over the last two decades, and many different designs and applications have been investigated. T...
Multiferroic magnetoelectric (ME) composites are attractive materials for various electrically and magnetically cross-coupled devices. Many studies have been conducted on fundamental understanding, fabrication processes, and applications of ME compos...
Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) are soft and flexible linear pneumatic actuators which produce human muscle like actuation. Due to these properties, the muscle actuators have an adaptable compliance for various robotic platforms as well as medica...
Energy harvesting is the most effective way to respond to the energy shortage and to produce sustainable power sources from the surrounding environment. The energy harvesting technology enables scavenging electrical energy from wasted energy sources,...
Piezoelectric transformers (PTs) are solid-state devices that transform electrical energy into electrical energy by means of a mechanical vibration. These devices are manufactured using piezoelectric materials that are driven at resonance. With appro...
The generalized parametric structural schematic diagram, the generalized structural-parametric model, and the generalized matrix transfer function of an electromagnetoelastic actuator with output parameters displacements are determined by solving the...
In the field of robotics, soft robots have been showing great potential in the areas of medical care, education, service, rescue, exploration, detection, and wearable devices due to their inherently high flexibility, good compliance, excellent adapta...
In the last decade, an enormous amount of attention has been paid to piezoelectric harvesters due to their flexibility in design and the increasing need for small-scale energy generation. As a result, various energy review papers have been presented...
In this systematic survey, an overview of non-conventional actuators particularly used in soft-robotics is presented. The review is performed by using well-defined performance criteria with a direction to identify the exemplary and potential applicat...
Due to issues with Pb toxicity, there is an urgent need for high performance Pb-free alternatives to Pb-based piezoelectric ceramics. Although pure BaTiO3 material exhibits fairly low piezoelectric coefficients, further designing of such a material s...
Shape memory polymers (SMPs) are smart materials capable of changing their shapes in a predefined manner under a proper applied stimulus and have gained considerable interest in several application fields. Particularly, two-way and multiple-way SMPs...
The Series Elastic Actuator (SEA) has recently been developed by many research groups and applied in various fields. As SEA is the combination of motor, spring, gear and load, various types and configurations of mechanism have been developed as SEAs...
Piezoelectric motors are used in many industrial and commercial applications. Various piezoelectric motors are available in the market. All of the piezoelectric motors use the inverse piezoelectric effect, where microscopically small oscillatory moti...
Magnetostrictive actuators play an important role in the perception of usefulness of smart materials and devices. Their applications are potentially wider than that of piezoelectric actuators because of the higher energy density and intrinsic robustn...
In this work, the parametric structural schematic diagrams of a multilayer electromagnetoelastic actuator and a multilayer piezoactuator for nanomechanics were determined in contrast to the electrical equivalent circuits of a piezotransmitter and pie...
In this paper, we present the design and development of the UC-Softhand. The UC Softhand is a low cost, Bionic and adaptive hand that takes advantage of compliant joints. By optimization of the actuation strategy as well as the actuation mechanism, w...
In the medical field and in soft robotics, flexible devices are required for safe human interaction, while rigid structures are required to withstand the force application and accuracy in motion. This paper aims at presenting controllable stiffness m...
Piezoelectric inertia motors—also known as stick-slip motors or (smooth) impact drives—use the inertia of a body to drive it in small steps by means of an uninterrupted friction contact. In addition to the typical advantages of piezoelectric motors,...
Jamming is a popular and versatile soft robotic mechanism, enabling new systems to be developed that can achieve high stiffness variation with minimal volume variation. Numerous applications have been reported, including deep-sea sampling, industrial...
Rings with Hirth couplings are primarily used for the accurate positioning of axial-symmetric components in the machine tool industry and, generally, in mechanical components. It is also possible to use Hirth rings as connection tools. Specific indus...
Active Magnetic Bearings (AMBs) are already widely used in rotating machinery and continue to gain popularity due to the ever-present push to higher rotational speeds and decreasing prices of associated electronic components. They offer several advan...
This paper shows the construction of a low-cost, open-source mechanical ventilator. The motivation for constructing this kind of ventilator comes from the worldwide shortage of mechanical ventilators for treating COVID-19 patients—the COVID-19...
Pneumatic artificial muscles are pneumatic devices with practical and various applications as common actuators. They, as human muscles, work in agonistic-antagonistic way, giving a traction force only when supplied by compressed air. The state of the...
Ionic electromechanically active polymers (IEAP) are laminar composites that can be considered attractive candidates for soft actuators. Their outstanding properties such as low operating voltage, easy miniaturization, and noiseless operation are, ho...
Thin fiber-shaped pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) can generate contractile motions upon stimulation, and it is well known for its good compliance, high weight-to-power ratio, resemblance to animal muscle movements, and, most importantly, the capabi...
In this paper, we present the details of the actuator design for our humanoid robot, Mithra. Mithra has been designed to match an average adult human in terms of kinematic and kinetic characteristics. This poses various challenges in actuator design...
This review will examine the rapidly growing field of soft robotics, with a special emphasis on soft robotic actuators and their applications in bioengineering. Bioengineering has increasingly utilized soft robotics due to their mechanical adaptabili...
The leg structure with high dynamic stability can make the bionic biped robot have the inherent conditions to perform elastic and highly dynamic motion. Compared with the quadruped robot, the leg structure of the biped robot is more complex and has m...
Arm support systems provide support throughout daily tasks, training or in an industrial environment. During the last decades a large diversity of actuated arm support systems have been developed. To analyze the actuation principles in these systems,...
Conventional pneumatic grippers are widely used in industrial pick and place robot processes for rigid objects. They are simple, robust and fast, but their design, motion and features are limited, and they do not fulfil the final purpose. Food produc...
This paper presents an in-depth system-level experimental analysis comparing air-cooled and liquid-cooled commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) electric motors. Typically, liquid-cooled electric motors are reserved for large, expensive, high-end applicatio...
With the breadth of applications and analysis performed over the last few decades, it would not be an exaggeration to call piezoelectric materials “the top of the crop” of smart materials. Piezoelectric materials have emerged as the most researched m...
We propose a simple methodology to paint carbon nanotube (CNT) powder with a soft brush onto an elastomer. A large deformation of dielectric elastomer actuator (DEA) occurs according to the small constraint of the electrodes. Uniform painting with a...
The current state-of-the-art of variable stiffness actuators consists mostly of different concepts for single-degree of freedom joints. However, in bio-inspired robotic applications, multiple degrees of freedom variable stiffness actuators are often...
Looking at new trends in global policies, electric vehicles (EVs) are expected to increasingly replace gasoline vehicles in the near future. For current electric vehicles, the motor current driving system and the braking control system are two indepe...
Industrial robots are most often position controlled and insensitive to external forces. In many robotic applications, however, such as teleoperation, haptics for virtual reality, and collaborative robotics, a close cooperation between humans and rob...
Compared with traditional rigid robots, soft robots have high flexibility, low stiffness, and adaptability to unstructured environments, and as such have great application potential in scenarios such as fragile object grasping and human machine inter...
In this article, various investigations on soft exoskeletons are presented and their functional and structural characteristics are analyzed. The present work is oriented to the studies of the last decade and covers the upper and lower joints, specifi...
We examine electrically conductive fabrics as conductive heaters for heat-activated soft actuators. We have explored various fabric designs optimized for material properties, heat distribution and actuation/de-actuation characteristics of the soft ac...
Lightweight, compliant actuators are particularly desirable in robotic systems intended for interaction with humans. Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) exhibit these characteristics and are capable of higher specific work than comparably-sized hydra...
In the past decade, advanced technologies in robotics have been explored to enhance the rehabilitation of post-stroke patients. Previous works have shown that gait assistance for post-stroke patients can be provided through the use of robotics techno...
In the context of automated driving, Electric Power Steering (EPS) systems represent an enabling technology. They introduce the ergonomic function of reducing the physical effort required by the driver during the steering maneuver. Furthermore, EPS g...
Micromanipulation is a hot topic due to its enabling role in various research fields. In order to perform a high precision operation at a small scale, compliant mechanisms have been proposed and applied for decades. In microscale manipulation, micro-...
Soft robotics requires technologies that are capable of generating forces even though the bodies are composed of very light, flexible and soft elements. A soft actuation mechanism was developed in this work, taking inspiration from the arm of the Oct...
Through remote forces, levitating micro-actuators completely eliminate mechanical attachment between the stationary and moving parts of a micro-actuator, thus providing a fundamental solution to overcoming the domination of friction over inertial for...
Over the past decade, 3D printing technology has been leading the manufacturing revolution. A recent development in the field of 3D printing has added time as a fourth dimension to obtain 4D printing parts. A fabricated design created by 3D printing...
In this paper, the related studies of chassis configurations and control systems for four-wheel independent drive/steering electric vehicles (4WID-4WIS EV) are reviewed and discussed. Firstly, some prototypes and integrated X-by-wire modules of 4WID-...
