Robotized additive manufacturing of silicone for skeleton-reinforced linear soft actuators

This paper presents a method for manufacturing a soft pneumatic linear actuator. The linear actuator is based on a deformable chamber reinforced by a cylindrical auxetic structure. The objective of this work is to create a hermetic silicone chamber inside the auxetic structure previously machined in PVC. The manufacturing process is based on 3D silicone printing using an anthropomorphic robotic arm. The proposed strategy increases the versatility of the process compared to overmolding strategies, especially in regard to the dimensions of the actuator. In this paper we present an experimental setup integrating a robotic arm, the system for the registration of the different elements and the control of the print head trajectories. The actuator has been designed, built and implemented, allowing us to evaluate its performances and life span.