Soft Tendril-Inspired Grippers: Shape Morphing of Programmable Polymer–Paper Bilayer Composites

• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b18079
• Publication Date: 2018-03-05T15:34:04Z
• Authors: Wei Wang; Chenzhe Li; Maenghyo Cho; Sung-Hoon Ahn
• Keywords: Tendril; Grippers; Morphing; Soft Robotics

Nastic movements in plants that occur response to environmental stimuli have inspired many man-made shape-morphing systems. Tendril is an exemplification serving as a parasitic grasping component for the climbing by transforming from straight shape into coiled configuration via asymmetric contraction of internal stratiform plant tissues. Inspired tendrils, this study using three-dimensional (3D) printing approach developed class soft grippers with preprogrammed deformations being capable imitating general motions including bending, spiral, and helical distortions grasping. These initially flat configurations were tailored polymer-paper bilayer composite sheet fabricated 3D polymer on paper substrate different patterns. The rough porous surface provides printed well-adhered which turn serves passive strain-limiting layer. During printing, melted filament stretched, enabling strain be stored memory, then it can thermally released, will concurrently resisted layer, resulting various transformations based geometries. obtained used designing grasp objects corresponding motions. Furthermore, fully equipped robotic tendril three segments was reproduced, where one segment object other two forming tendril-like twistless spring-like structure. This further helps development robots active materials engineered