Internal Pressure Pattern Design for Variable Surface Shapes of Tongue-Type Pneumatic Soft Actuator

Pneumatic soft actuators with arrayed chambers (PSAC) can reproduce complex and various shapes such as tongues. This study presents a design method for an internal pressure pattern for the tongue-type PSAC. Specifically, using an analytical model, the propose method determines the internal pressure patterns to reproduce the target surface shapes given to PSAC. First, a discrete model representing the surface shape of PSAC for the internal pressure patterns of chambers is constructed using multiple linear elastic elements. Next, the internal pressure patterns to realize the target surface shapes are obtained by nonlinear mathematical optimization using the constructed PSAC surface shape model. Finally, the proposed method is used to obtain the internal pressure patterns for four different target surface shapes. Furthermore, the proposed method is validated through experiments on the actual PSAC.