Abstract:
The trend of soft robots has received attention from engineers and researchers around the world. The key of soft robots development is the selection of elastomer materials. Nowadays, soft robots is cast using silicone rubber.
Sulphur pre-vulcanize latex was utilized in this research. Rapid prototyping was used to design molds for the casting process. Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polycarbonate (PC) were used as materials for the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technique. High temperature RGD525 was used for the Poly-Jetting (PJ) technique. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) thermograms indicated that ABS, PC and RGD525 can be utilized to mold prototypes at the heat from -20 degree Celsius to 110° degree Celsius Generally, the molding process of soft robots with silicone rubber is done by semi-cured state layer casting which is not easy to process with natural rubber.
In this experiment, the new deduction core casting, the most appropriate method, is applied to soft robots preparation. Storage modulus was measured by Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA). The results show that the Tan delta value is below 0.2 and demonstrates elastic properties of natural rubber soft robots. Consequently, the bending behavior of the soft robots was tested by measuring the bending angle with an air pressure from 0 to 40 ml. The developed natural rubber soft robots can bend from 0 to 90 degrees Celsius when correlating with the air volume applied to casting silicone rubber-soft robots.