Proposal of fabrication concept for soft robots with laser cutting machine

Abstract

The various fabrication process for soft mechanisms has been proposed and it greatly expanded the potential of soft robots. However, when considering the manufacturing and use of soft robots in specific situations, such as the lunar environment, the conventional fabrication process is unsuitable for such situations because it requires skill in complex molding processes and several materials and manufacturing equipment for fabrication. In this study, we propose a concept of manufacturing a variety of inflatable soft mechanisms with plastic sheets only by using laser cutting machine. To confirm the feasibility of the concept, a prototype of the soft robots are fabricated using a commercial laser cutter.