Scalable pneumatic actuator for easy creation of animated animal-shaped objects

Abstract

We propose a simple compact pneumatic actuator that can be embedded in the joints of 3D articulated robotic objects and is scalable to the size of the joints. The main advantages of the proposed actuator are its enablement of interactive flopping movement control of real 3D robotic objects, and its simple design, fabrication method, and control process. The design process is facilitated by computer-aided joint detection, the fabrication method is simplified by digital fabrication such as 3D printing, and the control utilizes readily available modularized pneumatic control components and an interactive graphical user interface. We used the example of a cat to demonstrate the simple workflow for fabricating a robotic animal that uses the proposed actuator. The created robotic cat had five joints and used 10 actuators.