Design and Fabrication of a Deployable Rubber Membrane for a Circular Mesh-Type Robot

This paper shows a design and fabrication process that combines soft robotics and origami technology for developing a modular robot. Integration of multiple modular robots provides hyper degrees of freedom and creates a deformable system. The application of soft robotics to a modular robot makes it adaptable to diverse environments. Choosing a feasible method of design and fabrication for the modular robot is necessary to obtain the desirable deformation of the system. Among the various proposed methods, application of origami structures based on mathematical operations can facilitate the design process of elastic robots. Here, we propose a novel circular mesh-type robot that has planar and three-dimensional shape transformation functions. Then, we present the application of conformal mapping origami structure to a soft robot and make a deplorable rubber membrane, which is a key part of a variable-radius circular robot.