Elastomeric Origami: Programmable Paper‐Elastomer Composites as Pneumatic Actuators

By R. V. Martinez, Carina R. Fish, Xin Chen, George M. Whitesides. 2012

620 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The development of soft pneumatic actuators based on composites consisting of elastomers with embedded sheet or fiber structures (e.g., paper or fabric) that are flexible but not extensible is described. On pneumatic inflation, these actuators move anisotropically, based on the motions accessible by their composite structures. They are inexpensive, simple to fabricate, light in weight, and easy to actuate. This class of structure is versatile: the same principles of design lead to actuators that respond to pressurization with a wide range of motions (bending, extension, contraction, twisting, and others). Paper, when used to introduce anisotropy into elastomers, can be readily folded into 3D structures following the principles of origami; these folded structures increase the stiffness and anisotropy of the elastomeric actuators, while being light in weight. These soft actuators can manipulate objects with moderate performance; for example, they can lift loads up to 120 times their weight. They can also be combined with other components, for example, electrical components, to increase their functionality.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e30d31204e4fe885ce9bbdd5c759958d2e3e2b1f

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In Biomedical Engineering

In Mechanical Engineering

Citations in the corpus

High-Force Soft Printable Pneumatics for Soft Robotic Applications (2016, neutral): “22 Another type of actuator is the ﬁber-reinforced actuators.”
Fluid-driven origami-inspired artificial muscles (2017, methodology): “Origami structures and fibers have previously been used as the constraining layers (29, 30) and embedded components (31) to provide reinforcement and programmability in pneumatic elastomeric actuators.”
Soft Robots Manufacturing: A Review (2018, background): “Using specific structural patterns it is actually possible to create soft actuators exhibiting both a soft behavior and high forces (Martinez et al., 2012).”
Pouch Motors: Printable Soft Actuators Integrated with Computational Design (2015, background): “Fiber-reinforced materials and elastomer composites [17] are employed for selective deformation.”
Modeling of Soft Fiber-Reinforced Bending Actuators (2015, background): “In particular, pneumatic and hydraulic powered soft actuators are promising candidates for robotics applications because of their lightweight, high power-to-weight ratio, low material cost, and ease of fabrication with emerging digital fabrication techniques [15]–[19], [23].”
PneUI: pneumatically actuated soft composite materials for shape changing interfaces (2013, methodology): “structural layers with various mechanical properties, the orientation of deformation can be pre-defined [19].”
3D printed shape-programmable magneto-active soft matter for biomimetic applications (2020, background): “With a wide range of actuations such as electric fields [2–4], chemicals [5,6], heat [7,8], light [9,10], pressure [11,12] or magnetic fields [13–19], soft active materials have the potential to create mechanical functionalities beyond those of traditional machines [20].”