A Seamless Workflow for Design and Fabrication of Multimaterial Pneumatic Soft Actuators

Soft robotic actuators offer a range of attractive features relative to traditional rigid robots including inherently safer human-robot interaction and robustness to unexpected or extreme loading conditions. Soft robots are challenging to design and fabricate, and most actuators are designed by trial and error and fabricated using labor-intensive multi-step casting processes. We present an integrated collection of software tools that address several limitations in the existing design and fabrication workflow for pneumatic soft actuators. We use implicit geometry functions to specify geometry and material distribution, a GUI-based software tool for interactive exploration of computational network representations of these implicit functions, and an automated tool for generating rapid simulation results of candidate designs. We prioritize seamless connectivity between all stages of the design and fabrication process, and elimination of steps that require human intervention. The software tools presented here integrate with existing capabilities for multimaterial additive manufacturing, and are also forward-compatible with emerging automated design techniques. The workflow presented here is intended as a community resource, and aimed at lowering barriers for the discovery of novel soft actuators by experts and novice users. The data gathered from human-interaction with this tool will be used by future automation tools to enable fully-automated soft actuator design based on high-level specifications.