Robotic Tentacles with Three‐Dimensional Mobility Based on Flexible Elastomers

By R. V. Martinez, Jamie L. Branch, Carina R. Fish, Lihua Jin, Robert F. Shepherd, Rui Nunes, Zhigang Suo, George M. Whitesides. Advances in Materials, 2013

688 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Soft robotic tentacles that move in three dimensions upon pressurization are fabricated by composing flexible elastomers with different tensile strengths using soft lithographic molding. These actuators are able to grip complex shapes and manipulate delicate objects. Embedding functional components into these actuators (for example, a needle for delivering fluid, a video camera, and a suction cup) extends their capabilities.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/09df6fe06c514f334884be1db8951360670ebec6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

In Condensed Matter Physics

Citations in the corpus

Information processing via physical soft body (2015, background): “A comparable structure has been commonly used for soft robotic arms (see, e.g., [27,28]).”
A Recipe for Soft Fluidic Elastomer Robots (2015, neutral): “, containing nine pneumatic crescent-shaped channels embedded within three body segments.(42) FIG.”
Design, kinematics, and control of a soft spatial fluidic elastomer manipulator (2016, methodology): “Secondly, similar to our planar design, but different from the design in Martinez et al. (2013), the manipulator presented here has features such as a hollow cylindrical interior and soft segment endplates.”
STIFF-FLOP surgical manipulator: Mechanical design and experimental characterization of the single module (2013, positive): “Another very recent robotic tentacle is presented in [17] where a network of pneumatic chambers is embedded and distributed along a silicone structure, thus enabling large amplitude actuation in the soft elastomer by pressurizing and inflating them.”
Mechanically Versatile Soft Machines through Laminar Jamming (2018, background): “[5] RV Martinez, JL Branch, CR Fish, L Jin, RF Shepherd, RMD Nunes, Z Suo, and GM Whitesides.”
High-Force Soft Printable Pneumatics for Soft Robotic Applications (2016, neutral): “14 Soft actuators can be actuated by many different ways, for example, tendon driven using cables or shape-memory alloy, 15,16 electrically driven using electroactive polymers, 17,18 and ﬂuid driven using hydraulic 19 or pneumatic.”