Paper
6 April 2009 Printing 3D dielectric elastomer actuators for soft robotics
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Abstract
We present a new approach to the fabrication of soft dielectric elastomer actuators using a 3D printing process. Complete actuators including active membranes and support structures can be 3D printed in one go, resulting in a great improvement in fabrication speed and increases in accuracy and consistency. We describe the fabrication process and present force and displacement results for a double-membrane antagonistic actuator. In this structure controlled prestrain is applied by the simple process of pressing together two printed actuator halves. The development of 3D printable soft actuators will have a large impact on many application areas including engineering, medicine and the emerging field of soft robotics.
© (2009) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Jonathan Rossiter, Peter Walters, and Boyko Stoimenov "Printing 3D dielectric elastomer actuators for soft robotics", Proc. SPIE 7287, Electroactive Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD) 2009, 72870H (6 April 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.815746
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CITATIONS
Cited by 81 scholarly publications and 16 patents.
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KEYWORDS
Actuators

3D printing

Robotics

Printing

Electrodes

Dielectric elastomer actuators

Robots

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