CHANNELS

Aerospace

Automotive

Automated & Autonomous Vehicles

Battery & Electrification Technology

Defense

Drone TV

Electronics

Manufacturing & Prototyping

Materials

Medical

Motion Control

RF & Microwave Technology

Robotics & Automation

Sensors & IoT

Test & Measurement

Aerospace
Automotive
Automated & Autonomous Vehicles
Battery & Electrification Technology
Defense
Drone TV
Electronics
Manufacturing & Prototyping
Materials
Medical
Motion Control
RF & Microwave Technology
Robotics & Automation
Sensors & IoT
Test & Measurement
Aerospace & Defense
Search Results

Soft, Air-Powered Robots Mimic Human Muscles

An EPFL team is developing soft, flexible, and reconfigurable robots. The low-cost, air-actuated robots are designed to be used on the human body in order to help people move. Made of elastomers, including silicon and rubber, they behave like human muscles and are inherently safe. They are controlled by changing the air pressure in specially designed 'soft balloons' that also serve as the robot's body. The cucumber-shaped actuators can stretch up to around five or six times their normal length and bend in two directions, depending on the model. Potential applications for these robots include patient rehabilitation, handling fragile objects, biomimetic systems and home care.

Topics:
Automation Materials Medical Motion Control Motors & Drives Rehabilitation & Physical Therapy Robotics

More From SAE Media Group

    Transcript

    00:00:04 at our lab we are working on new solutions for new type of robots called Soft robots soft robots put its focuses on uh making a new type of robots that are squishy compliant light and customizable for this we used off the-shelf inexpensive materials such as paper such as plastic so by combining um the difference in materials for the shell and for the core um we inherited

    00:00:31 different mechanical properties we can tune the stiffness of our robot we can tune the motion of our robot uh depending on the application desire in particular we work on applications such as uh biomedical Rehabilitation Human Assistance we're trying to create wearable devices one of the soft robots that we develop is a wearable device that is in the form of a belt designed

    00:00:55 for upper body postural support and Rehabilitation exercise uh this was motivated by a collaboration with physiotherapists who study stroke patients that suffer from an asymmetry uh which is detrimental to gate inside the belt we use a type of artificial muscle which is made of a rubber tube that we inflate with pressurized air but rather than expand like a balloon we

    00:01:18 wrap this uh rubber tube with an a fiber that does not stretch so that allows the artificial muscle to expand or contract or bend in the way that we want to apply the proper Force to the belt e