Hardware Programming of a Single-input Pneumatic Mechanism to Control Multiple Elastic Inflatable Actuators

Elastic inflatable actuators (EIAs) are widely used in the emerging field of soft robotics. Although integrating multiple EIAs in soft robots has been demonstrated successful, these EIAs typically require independent control inputs that results in a complex actuation process. This paper proposes a single-input pneumatic mechanisms (SIPM) to generate a wide range of output pressures via hardware programming, enabling multiple EIAs to achieve different motions. We first present a conceptual design of the SIPM and build its pneumatic model based on air compressibility, which relates the control inputs, the structural parameters of the SIPM, and the output pressures. Then, we perform a series of parametric analyses and numerical simulations to investigate the hardware programming of structural parameters for target output pressures. Finally, a SIPM prototype whose structural parameters are derived from simulation results is developed. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism.