2020 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
The development of active tactile sensors in the form of wrinkles and it's application to soft robotics
| Project/Area Number |
20J15087
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| Research Institution | Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
QI QIUKAI 北陸先端科学技術大学院大学, 先端科学技術研究科, 特別研究員(DC2)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-24 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Adaptive Morphology / Wrinkled Sensor / Wrinkled Actuator |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In FY2020, we conducted a series of further experiments on the basis of previous results on WrinTac. We first modified the material and dimension, then tested it under bending actuation in terms of morphing, sensing and perception capability. We found that WrinTac under different morphology perform very differently, demonstrating the need for adaptive morphology in real-time tasks. Base on findings on WrinTac, we proposed new models, BPActuator and AdapTip, for actuation and sensing, respectively. Here, BPActuator is a lightweight, low-cost and easy-to-fabricate actuator capable of effective bending actuation. AdapTip is a tactile sensor with adaptive morphology that can change stiffness actively in order to suit for different tasks.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
In this year, apart from the necessary work on WrinTac, we have also developed new sensor (AdapTip) and actuator (BPActuator) based on the findings of WrinTac, extending our idea about adaptive morphology. Specifically, we found that WrinTac can change sensitivity to normal and optimize performance in different tasks. These findings verified out hypothesis that adaptive morphology is beneficial for tactile sensing and perception. Then we proposed new actuator model, BPActuator, to realize pure bending movement without introducing stretching or contraction, which can be very useful to further integrate with WrinTac. Finally, we proposed new sensor prototype, AdapTip, expecting to verify our findings about adaptive morphology on new model.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
In the next year, we will continue our research on all models, WrinTac, BPActuator, and AdapTip. First, we will extend current work on BPActuator to thoroughly understand how the wrinkle wave morphology can affect the actuating property. Then we will try to implement new application of BPActuator, for example, to provide bending actuation for WrinTac in active sensing tasks. At the same time, we will also investigate AdapTip in terms of modelling, simulation, and online morphological computation for optimized performance, in order to verify our findings on beneficial effect of adaptive morphology.
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