Print Email Facebook Twitter Energy Efficiency of Soft Pneumatic Extension Actuators Title Energy Efficiency of Soft Pneumatic Extension Actuators Author de Vries, Jelle (TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering) Contributor Sakes, A. (mentor) Dodou, D. (graduation committee) Overvelde, Bas (mentor) Degree granting institution Delft University of Technology Programme Mechanical Engineering Date 2021-08-31 Abstract Mobile soft robots show great potential for exploration of unknown and hard to navigate environments. Sadly, most of these robots are currently being held back by their power sources and control systems. These components, which are usually quite heavy and bulky, need to be integrated before mobile soft robots can cut their tethers and explore the world autonomously. Soft robots should be mindful of their energy consumption to minimize the requirements on the power supply. However, the efficiency of their actuators is still a not well understood area of research. We attempt to pave the road for future research into this subject by developing a testing protocol based on a simplified analytical model. We built an experimental setup and investigated the efficiency of soft pneumatic extension actuators. We found that actuator designs which reduce axial stiffness produced higher efficiency. Additionally, we found that efficiency increases with load, until it is limited by the buckling load. Unfortunately, these two conditions seem to conflict with each other since a lower axial stiffness also reduced the buckling load. Future actuator designs should therefore try to combine a low axial stiffness with high load bearing capabilities. Also, this research should be extended to different classes of soft actuators as well as investigating non-ideal circumstances. We believe this research aids in the general understanding of efficiency of soft actuators and act as a stepping stone for future research. Subject Soft RoboticspneumaticExperimentalEnergy Efficiency To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:75533c14-af84-4a9e-9d4f-f2e302caf2fd Part of collection Student theses Document type master thesis Rights © 2021 Jelle de Vries Files PDF Thesis_Jelle_de_Vries_4292987.pdf 11.62 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:75533c14-af84-4a9e-9d4f-f2e302caf2fd/datastream/OBJ/view