Soft-smart functional devices and machines, made of soft-smart materials and structures, have been augmenting, supplementing, extending, and replacing their conventional hard equivalents due to the fact that they provide intrinsic compliance matching and biocompatibility. These new capabilities enable them to have safer interactions with human beings and natural environments, and better resilience and adaptability to various environments. Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) and soft electroadhesion (EA) grippers are two promising soft-smart mechanisms and structures that can be used for active actuation and adhesion for soft robots. We integrate DEAs and soft EAs into monolithic soft structures capable of self-actuation and self-adhesion. These structures are fabricated by casting customized electrode materials onto dielectric elastomer membranes. Concomitant or separate actuation and adhesion can be achieved in active areas of these structures via customized control strategies. In this work, we also present a comprehensive survey of existing DEA and EA combination work. Soft-smart DEA-EA structures could impact on many fields including robotics and material handling technologies.

Date Published: 13 March 2019
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 10966, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) XXI, 109661P (13 March 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2514589

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10966:
Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) XXI
Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Editor(s)