Exploiting instabilities of origami valve mechanism for soft robotics fluidic onboard control system

Date
2024
DOI
Authors
Chong, Jun Hong Vince
Version
Embargo Date
2027-05-31
OA Version
Citation
Abstract
Soft robotics is a promising paradigm for replicating dexterous characteristics that biological organisms have. Soft robotic technologies’ adaptability and safety have been leveraged by many researchers to implement morphological computation into their soft actuators. Despite many successes in the creation of soft actuators, the development of soft robotics systems capable of emulating the complexity and mimicking biological systems is still an open challenge. One of the key barriers to replicating biological systems’ complexity in soft robots is the lack of ability to embed onboard control. For this dissertation, an origami valve mechanism will be presented as a promising fluidic valve to be integrated into an underactuated mapping control system for manipulating the fluid flow and directing it toward different soft actuator outputs. By harnessing the mechanical instabilities and mobility of the origami, different logic gates, such as AND and NOT gates, and a latch can be obtained. These gates, along with this latch, leverage the kinking behavior of the tubing which consequently leads to fluidic computation and mapping capabilities.
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