The soft robots actuated by pressure, cables, thermal, electrosorption, combustion and smart materials are usually faced with the problems of poor portability, noise, weak load capacity, small deformation and high driving voltages. In this paper, a novel pneumatic generator for soft robots based on the gas-liquid reversible transition is proposed, which has the advantages of large output force, easy deformation, strong load capacity and high flexibility. The pressure of the pneumatic generator surges or drops flexibly through the reversible transformation between liquid and gas phase, making the soft actuator stretch or contract regularly, without external motors, compressors and pressure-regulating components. The gas-liquid reversible-transition actuation process is modeled to analyze its working mechanism and characteristics. The pressure during the pressurization stage increases linearly with a rate regulated by the heating power and gas volume. It decreases exponentially with the exponential term as a quadratic function of time at the fast depressurization stage, while with the exponential term as a linear function of time at the slow depressurization stage. The drop rate can be adjusted by changing the gas volume and cooling conditions. Furthermore, effectiveness has been verified through experiments of the prototype. The pressure reaches 25 bar with a rising rate of +3.935 bar/s when 5 mL weak electrolyte solution is heated at 800 W, and the maximum depressurization rate in air cooling is –3.796 bar/s. The soft finger actuated by the pneumatic generator can bend with an angular displacement of 67.5°. The proposed pneumatic generator shows great potential to be used for the structure, driving and sensing integration of artificial muscles.
Sensorized Foam Actuator with Intrinsic Proprioception and Tunable Stiffness Behavior for Soft Robots