F112001 A Flexible Mechanical System with Hydraulic Skeleton

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to build a flexible mechanical system with a hydraulic skeleton using flexible bags. Such flexible system has advantages such as reducing collision risk, adaptive deformation against environment and dealing with fragile objects. The main components of this system are two types of flexible bag. One is a structural bag with constant inner pressure. The other is an actuator bag with controlled inner pressure. This study introduces several applications of the flexible system as follows; a flexible robotic arm, a hermetically sealed mobile robot with double roped structure and a ciliary actuator sheet. To design such systems, it is necessary to estimate both structural deformation and driving force. Although numerical analysis of flexible bags is difficult because of large nonlinear deformation, this study analyzed structural strength and driving force of flexible bags with the nonlinear finite element analysis software ABAQUS. The stress concentration dependency on the bag shape is described and the driving force is calculated including the large deformation.