Jun Shintake

Jun Shintake, Harshal Sonar, Egor Piskarev et al.

We present a fully edible pneumatic actuator based on gelatin-glycerol composite. The actuator is monolithic, fabricated via a molding process, and measures 90 mm in length, 20 mm in width, and 17 mm in thickness. Thanks to the composite mechanical characteristics similar to those of silicone elastomers, the actuator exhibits a bending angle of 170.3 ° and a blocked force of 0.34 N at the applied pressure of 25 kPa. These values are comparable to elastomer based pneumatic actuators. As a validation example, two actuators are integrated to form a gripper capable of handling various objects, highlighting the high performance and applicability of the edible actuator. These edible actuators, combined with other recent edible materials and electronics, could lay the foundation for a new type of edible robots.

Jun Shintake, Aiguo Ming, Makoto Shimojo

This paper presents aims at mobility improvement of flexible underwater robots. For this purpose, a novel propulsion method using planar structural vibration pattern is proposed, and tested on two kinds of prototypes. The result of experiments showed the possibility of the movements for multiple directions: forward, backward, turn, rotation, drift, and their combination. These movements are achieved by only one structure with two actuators. The results also indicated the possibility of driving using eigenmodes since movements were concentrated on low driving frequency area. To investigate the relation between movement and structural vibration pattern, we established a simulation model.