Leveraging Bioinspired Structural Constraints for Tunable and Programmable Snapping Dynamics in High-Speed Soft Actuators.

Highlights

1.        Bioinspired design principle enables preparation of high-speed actuators with tunable and programmable snapping dynamics.

2.        Controllable catapult motion and programmable jumping on-demand tuned.

3.        Structure actuators exhibit both a unique combination of ultrafast moving speed, powerful ejection, and high jumping height.

4.        A new universal design paradigm for high-performance soft robotics and actuation devices.

Abstract

Creating high-speed soft actuators will have broad engineering and technological applications. Snapping provides a power-amplified mechanism to achieve rapid movements in soft actuators that typically show slow movements. However, precise control of snapping dynamics (e.g., speed and direction of launching or jumping) remains a daunting challenge. Here, a bioinspired design principle is presented that harnesses a reconfigurable constraint structure integrated into a photoactive liquid crystal elastomer actuator to enable tunable and programmable control over its snapping dynamics. By reconfiguring constrained fin-array-shaped structure, the snapping dynamics of the structured actuator, such as launching or jumping angle and height, motion speed, and release force can be on-demand tuned, thus enabling controllable catapult motion and programmable jumping. Moreover, the structured actuators exhibit a unique combination of ultrafast moving speed (up to 2.5 m s⁻¹ in launching and 0.22 m s⁻¹ in jumping), powerful ejection (long ejection distance of ≈20 cm, 35 mg ball), and high jumping height (≈8 cm, 40 times body lengths), which few other soft actuators can achieve. This study provides a new universal design paradigm for realizing controllable rapid movements and high-power motions in soft matter, which are useful for building high-performance soft robotics and actuation devices.

Snapping provides a power-amplified mechanism to achieve rapid movements in soft actuators that typically show slow movements. However, precise control of snapping dynamics for synthetic actuators remains a daunting challenge. Here, we present a bioinspired design principle that harnesses a reconfigurable constraint structure integrated into a photoactive soft actuator to enable tunable and programmable control over its snapping dynamics.

论文链接：Leveraging Bioinspired Structural Constraints for Tunable and Programmable Snapping Dynamics in High-Speed Soft Actuators