I-support soft arm for assistance tasks: a new manufacturing approach based on 3D printing and characterization
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FULL RESEARCH ARTICLE
I‑support soft arm for assistance tasks: a new manufacturing approach based on 3D printing and characterization Luca Arleo1,2 · Gianni Stano3 · Gianluca Percoco3 · Matteo Cianchetti1,2 Received: 7 July 2020 / Accepted: 7 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Soft robotics is an emerging scientific field well known for being widespread employed in several applications where dexterity and safe interaction are of major importance. In particular, a very challenging scenario in which it is involved concerns biomedical field. In the last few years, several soft robotic devices have been developed to assist elderly people in daily tasks. In this paper, the authors present a new manufacturing approach for the fabrication of I-SUPPORT, a soft arm used to help needful people during shower activities. The proposed I-SUPPORT version, based on pneumatic and cable-driven actuation, is manufactured using Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF), the most common and inexpensive Additive Manufacturing (AM) technology. The advantages offered by FFF technology compared to traditional manufacturing methods regard: (i) the possibility to increase the automation degree of the process by reducing manual tasks, (ii) the decrease of assembly operations and (iii) an improvement in terms of supply chain. Moreover, the constitutive I-SUPPORT elements have been printed separately to save time, reduce materials and optimize the waste in case of failure. Afterwards, the proposed soft robotic arm has been tested to evaluate the performances and of the chambers, module and the whole I-SUPPORT manipulator. Keywords Additive manufacturing · Fused filament fabrication · Soft actuator: soft assistive robot · Flexible filament · Airtight
1 Introduction Additive manufacturing (AM) is an emerging manufacturing approach composed by 7 process groups [1], but the general manufacturing idea underlying all the groups is the same: fabricate objects layer by layer. The AM application fields are many, ranging from the aerospace one [2–4] to electronic fields [5–9], but at the state of art, Additive Manufacturing (AM) is still underexploited in the soft robotic field. This new engineering discipline is characterized by several and complex features, the main ones are: the usage of soft * Gianluca Percoco [email protected] 1
Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, The BioRobotics Institute, Viale Rinaldo Piaggio 34, Pontedera, 56025 Pisa, Italy
2
Department of Excellence in Robotics & AI, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Piazza Martiri della Libertà 33, 56127 Pisa, Italy
3
Department of Mechanics, Mathematics and Management, Polytechnic University of Bari, Via E. Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy
materials (with a Young modulus lower than 10 9 Pa) or compliant structures, the high bio-inspiration degree, the usage of several actuation methods (including non-conventional ones) and the possibility to modulate the stiffness of body parts [10–14]. The most common technique used to fabricate soft devices is moulding, in all its variants (e.g.
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