Modeling of a two-degree-of-freedom fiber-reinforced soft pneumatic actuator

Abstract Fiber winding reinforcement is widely used in soft robotic manipulators actuated by pressurized fluids. However, the specific effect of each type of winding on the bending motion of a tubular soft robotics manipulator with three chambers has not been explored widely. We present the development of precise finite element (FE) simulations and investigate the effect of helical fiber winding parameters on the bending motion of a two-degree-of-freedom manipulator with three internal chambers. We first show the development of an FE simulation that optimizes convergence and computational time and precisely matches the behavior of soft robots in practice. Compared to single-chamber robots, simulating three-chamber designs is more challenging due to the complex geometry. We then apply our FE model to simulate all the parameter variations. We show that for helical winding with a constant pitch, the closer the center of a chamber is to the intersection of the windings, the lower the bending stiffness of the chamber is. To minimize bending stiffness variation in different bending directions, the optimal angle between the center of the first chamber and the intersection of the two helical windings are 0° and 12°. Reducing the pitch of the helical windings or using other types of windings (i.e., ring winding or six helical winding) reduces the stiffness variation across different bending directions. The FE simulations are compared with experiments showing that the model can capture complex bending behaviors of the manipulator, even though the estimation tends to be less accurate at higher bending angles.