The idea of a soft wearable robot is appealing: imagine a glove that could grasp for you. Early prototypes using isotropic materials have given way to designs made from textiles, which are both light and intrinsically anisotropic — thus dispensing with the complex architectures. But cutting and sewing textiles takes time, and introduces weaknesses into any would-be robot. Now, Fionnuala Connolly and co-workers have come up with a bending actuator that can be fabricated quickly without seams, and optimized to perform a given task.
The team used a film to make their textiles impenetrable to air, and found that it could also bond to itself with the help of a heat press — offering a no-sew, time-saving solution. They then formulated a method based on strain energy minimization to predict the deformation of the actuator and optimize its parameters. Their test case — a glove designed to aid grasping — demonstrated the power of both fabrication and optimization processes by successfully picking up a glass jar.
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Klopper, A. It’s how you wear it. Nat. Phys. 15, 205 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0465-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0465-0