Abstract
Smart fabrics offer the potential for a new generation of soft robotics, reactive clothing and wearable technologies through the fusion of smart materials, textiles and electrical circuitry. In this work we present a range of smart fabrics and reactive textiles for soft robotics. We investigate conductive stretchable textiles for the fabrication of dielectric elastomer (DE) and electroadhesive (EA) actuators. These include a planar DE actuator, a bending DE actuator, and an EA actuator. The textile DE actuator generated a relative area expansion of 16.4 % under 9 kV while the bending actuator generated a relative expansion of 5 % under 6 kV. The EA actuator generated a shear adhesive force of 0.14 kPa at less than 5 kV. This work shows the feasibility of using conductive fabrics for soft actuation technologies. Conductive textiles have the potential to deliver simple, comfortable, multi-function and wearable soft robotic devices and complete soft robots.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | 2018 IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft 2018) |
| Subtitle of host publication | Proceedings of a meeting held 24-28 April 2018, Livorno, Italy |
| Publisher | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) |
| Pages | 339-343 |
| Number of pages | 5 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781538645161 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781538645178 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2018 |
| Event | 1st IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft 2018 - Livorno, Italy Duration: 24 Apr 2018 → 28 Apr 2018 |
Conference
| Conference | 1st IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, RoboSoft 2018 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Italy |
| City | Livorno |
| Period | 24/04/18 → 28/04/18 |
Structured keywords
- Tactile Action Perception
Keywords
- conductive textiles
- dielectric elastomer actuators
- electroadhesion
- soft actuators