Automated Fiber Embedding for Soft Mechatronic Components

• Published in: IEEE robotics and automation letters Vol. 6; no. 2; pp. 4071 - 4078
• Main Authors: Stalin, T., Jain, S., Thanigaivel, N. K., Teoh, J. E. M., Raj, P. M. Aby, Alvarado, P. Valdivia Y
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01-04-2021; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Actuators; Additive fiber manufacturing; automated fiber embedding; Automation; Coils; Composite materials; Elastomers; Embedding; Fabrication; Fiber placement; flexible electronics; Free form; Frequency division multiplexing; Long fibers; Manufacturing engineering; Needles; Robotics; soft composites; Soft robotics; Substrates; tailored soft robots; Three-dimensional displays
• ISSN: 2377-3766; 2377-3766
• DOI: 10.1109/LRA.2021.3067244

Many recent advances in smart composites for soft robotics have resulted from integration of long fibers to precisely control structural and functional properties. Compared to the time-consuming, laborious and error-prone process of manual long fiber placement typically used, Automated Fiber Embedding (AFE) has an enormous potential in soft robotics due to its repeatability, precision, and ease of integration with commonly used elastomers. In this work, three different approaches for automated layering and embedding of fibers inside silicone elastomers are presented. These techniques enable fabrication of soft composites comprising linear and free-form long fiber patterns without user intervention or manual post processing. To demonstrate the versatility of the techniques, several soft robotic applications ranging from actuators to inductive charging coils are presented.