Meet the ‘Soft Robot Factory’: Soft Roboticists Pioneer Cost-Effective 3D Printing Technique
Industry: Technology
With this new technique, conventional 3D printers can be used to create soft robots for clinical and industrial applications
SINGAPORE (PRUnderground) October 8th, 2016
A team of soft roboticists from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore have created a new and effective additive manufacturing technique that makes it possible to 3D print soft robots at affordable costs.
Recently, soft robotics has soared in popularity because the soft components they encompass offer interesting abilities and ranges of motion not afforded by traditional ‘hard’ robotics. Through research, soft robotics has proven to offer a new level of agility and sensitivity that can lend to numerous applications. However, current methods to manufacture soft robots are tedious, requiring multiple manual steps that can create inconsistency in actuator quality.
Dr. Raye Yeow and his team, Hong-Kai Yap and Hui-Yong Ng, worked tirelessly to find a way to print soft pneumatic actuators by way of 3D printing. By leveraging fused deposition modeling technology and seeking out a simple and more direct way to create soft robots, the team was able to manipulate a low-cost open-source consumer 3D printer in combination with a commercially available printing material to yield soft pneumatic actuators with customizable inner geometry, in addition to a high level of freedom in movement.
Over the course of their research, the team thoroughly researched the printing material’s material properties, the simulated behavior of the printed actuators, and characterized the actuators’ performance in terms of bending capability, output force, durability, and more. Also, the team successfully demonstrated the prospective applications of the soft actuators once they were fabricated via 3D printing.
Pictured: A 3D-printed soft gripper holding a 5-kg weight. A wrist rehabilitation device, powered by a 3D-printed bidirectional soft actuator
With their newly created 3D printed actuators, the team assembled a soft gripper with a high payload-to-weight ratio that could grasp and lift a wide range of object shapes and sizes. This soft gripper can be attached to most commercial robotic arms to provide delicate object manipulation, especially in assembly lines.
The team also created wearable hand and wrist rehabilitation devices, powered by the 3D-printed soft actuators, which were able to aid in hand and wrist exercises respectively.
This proposed technique is the first-in-class approach to directly 3D print airtight soft pneumatic actuators for soft robotic applications using fused deposition modeling technology.
According to Dr. Raye Yeow’s team, the new process they’ve developed will make it possible for anyone to directly 3D print soft robots with conventional, low-cost 3D printers for various applications.
His team has just released a paper documenting their high-force soft printable pneumatics for soft robotic applications. The team hopes that the ease of use and low costs conferred by their technique will make it easy for various key markets, including healthcare and consumer goods packaging, to develop new, effective products.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X0rDW6NQ58
About Dr. Raye Yeow
Raye is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Singapore, and an affiliated Principal Investigator with Singapore Institute for Neurotechnology and Advanced Robotics Center. His research interest is in developing soft wearable robotics for various healthcare applications. He is a MIT TR35 Asia 2016 awardee, and a scientific advisor to four start-up companies working on medical wearables.
