A Compliant Telescopic Limb with Anisotropic Stiffness

Aaron Fishman, Martin Garrad, Andrew D Hinitt, Plinio Rodrigues De Oliveira Zanini, Tim Barker, Jonathan Rossiter

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
534 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Soft limbs with anisotropic stiffness are common in nature and enable animals to solve a variety of tasks, including locomotion and manipulation. This mixture of hardness and softness enables animals to efficiently control the unpredictable contact forces that occur while performing such asks. A challenge for soft robotics is to create artificial limbs that mimic natural mixtures of hardness and softness for use as a building block for soft, adaptable robots. This article presents the design of a novel pneumatic limb module with adjustable length and anisotropic stiffness. The artificial limb is designed with a rigid telescopic endoskeleton inside a rubber bellow, which we show is able to resist buckling, while remaining externally soft. Finally, we present the design of a hexapod walker based on the limb units.
Original languageEnglish
Article number80
Number of pages8
JournalFrontiers in Robotics and AI
Volume3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2017

Research Groups and Themes

  • Tactile Action Perception

Keywords

  • Soft-Robotics
  • Variable-length
  • Pneumatic
  • Robosoft
  • Anisotropic-Stiffness

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