title: Microrobotic tentacles with spiral bending capability based on shape-engineered elastomeric microtubes.
abstract: Microscale soft-robots hold great promise as safe handlers of delicate micro-objects but their wider adoption requires micro-actuators with greater efficiency and ease-of-fabrication. Here we present an elastomeric microtube-based pneumatic actuator that can be extended into a microrobotic tentacle. We establish a new, direct peeling-based technique for building long and thin, highly deformable microtubes and a semi-analytical model for their shape-engineering. Using them in combination, we amplify the microtube's pneumatically-driven bending into multi-turn inward spiraling. The resulting micro-tentacle exhibit spiraling with the final radius as small as ~185 μm and grabbing force of ~0.78 mN, rendering itself ideal for non-damaging manipulation of soft, fragile micro-objects. This spiraling tentacle-based grabbing modality, the direct peeling-enabled elastomeric microtube fabrication technique, and the concept of microtube shape-engineering are all unprecedented and will enrich the field of soft-robotics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA.
authors.forename: Jungwook
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Paek
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA.
authors.forename: Inho
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA.
authors.forename: Jaeyoun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim