Soft Actuators News Today

Soft actuators offer several advantages over traditional rigid machines. Among soft materials, liquid metal (LM) is particularly noteworthy for its electro-responsive surface properties that induce flow or morphological changes, making it ideal for soft machines. Although using LM droplets as micropumps is simple, they face challenges in efficient vertical fluid pumping. Here, we report a pump-valve dual-functional LM soft actuator (PDLMA) that can continuously pump liquid upward. Benefiting fro...

This article discusses flexible and stretchable materials that have revolutionized the world of electronics.

/PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Exoskeleton Market by Component (Hardware, Software), Type (Powered, Passive), Body Part (Full Body, Lower & Upper Extremities),...

Janus films exhibit huge potential in actuation, sensing, advanced separation, energy conversion, storage, etc.

/PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Materials Technologies for Soft Robotics, Growth Opportunities" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.coms offering. This...

A magnetic sensor is a device that translates the magnitude and fluctuations of magnetic flux into electric impulses.

AZoRobotics speaks with Kevin Chen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about his research into the creation of diminutive drones that can fly around with bug-like agility and resilience.

Soft pneumatic actuators are usually fabricated using molding and casting techniques with silicone rubbers, which requires intensive manual labor and limits repeatability and design flexibility for complex geometries. This article presents the design and direct 3D-printing of novel omnidirectional soft pneumatic actuators using stereolithography (SLA) with an elastic resin and fused deposition modeling (FDM) with a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). The actuator is modeled and optimized for bendi...

Abstract Soft actuators are versatile and can readily perform various functions and interact safely with humans and the environment owing to their deformability. Shape memory alloys (SMAs) have advantages of high power-to-weight ratio, silent operation, and high response speed, which make them suitable for fabricating soft, compact, and muscle-like soft actuators with various transformation capabilities. However, it is challenging to precisely control SMA-based soft actuators and robots because...

Abstract Artificial muscle plays an interesting role in science discoveries. Large scale torsional and tensile actuation is achieved by twisting and coiling of synthetic polymer fibres. Research reports to date have discussed the theoretical background of actuation of twisted monofilament yarn. Twisting and coiling of several yarns together is another approach to fabricate polymer actuators and here we present the experimental observations of performance of actuators fabricated with multiple nu...