Mechanical assembly of soft deployable structures and robots

Abstract

This work describes the approaches of fabricating soft deployable structures using smart materials based soft hinge actuators combining a soft matrix and hinge-like movement through a rigid framework. The soft hinge actuator has the advantage of being simple to fabricate, inexpensive, lightweight and simple to actuate. This primary actuator can then be used to form modules capable of deployable deformation, which can then be assembled into deployable structures. The design of soft deployable structures is based on three principles: design of primary hinge actuators, assembly of modules and assembly of modules into large-scale deployable structures. This work describes both the non-dismountable and the dismountable modular assembling methods for constructing the deployable structures. The non-dismountable assembly is constructed by assembling the modules using 3D printed mechanical joints. Meanwhile, the dismountable assembly is constructed using identical soft deployable modules with embedded magnetic elements as the dismountable connectors. Then, by assembling identical soft deploy modules in different manners, different types of soft deployable structures can be easily and fast built and tested by re-utilizing the modules. The proposed approaches highlight the robust strategies for the rapid and simple prototyping of various complex soft deployable structures and robots.