Towards Very Low-Cost Iterative Prototyping for Fully Printable Dexterous Soft Robotic Hands
This work addresses the problem of iterative prototyping for soft robotic hands, making it more accessible and efficient for designers, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing rapid prototyping advances.
The paper tackled the time-consuming and difficult process of designing and fabricating soft robotic hands by introducing an approach that combines low-cost fabrication techniques with design tools for multi-material 3D printing, resulting in generated designs that are very low-cost, lightweight, highly durable, surprisingly strong, and capable of dexterous grasping.
The design and fabrication of soft robot hands is still a time-consuming and difficult process. Advances in rapid prototyping have accelerated the fabrication process significantly while introducing new complexities into the design process. In this work, we present an approach that utilizes novel low-cost fabrication techniques in conjunction with design tools helping soft hand designers to systematically take advantage of multi-material 3D printing to create dexterous soft robotic hands. While very low cost and lightweight, we show that generated designs are highly durable, surprisingly strong, and capable of dexterous grasping.