Design, Kinematics, and Application of Axially and Radially Expandable Modular Soft Pneumatic Actuators

Recently, soft pneumatic actuators (SPAs) have drawn increasing attention due to their ease of fabrication, high customizability, and intrinsic softness. Inspired by modular design, two kinds of SPAs, including an axial elongation soft pneumatic actuator (aeSPA) and a radial expansion soft pneumatic actuator (reSPA), are proposed in this paper, followed by their modeling, fabrication, and application in locomotion robots. The relationships between pressure and displacement of these SPAs are deduced based on the Yeoh model and the principle of virtual work, which has a good agreement with experimental results. Five modular worm-like crawling robots are fabricated by assembling the aeSPAs and reSPAs in different morphologies, and crawling tests are performed under different conditions to show the adaptivity of robots.