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Soft robotic actuators offer a range of attractive features relative to traditional rigid robots including inherently safer human-robot interaction and robustness to unexpected or extreme loading conditions. Soft robots are challenging to design and fabricate, and most actuators are designed by trial and error and fabricated using labor-intensive multi-step casting processes. We present an integrated collection of software tools that address several limitations in the existing design and fabrication workflow for pneumatic soft actuators. We use implicit geometry functions to specify geometry and material distribution, a GUI-based software tool for interactive exploration of computational network representations of these implicit functions, and an automated tool for generating rapid simulation results of candidate designs. We prioritize seamless connectivity between all stages of the design and fabrication process, and elimination of steps that require human intervention. The software tools presented here integrate with existing capabilities for multimaterial additive manufacturing, and are also forward-compatible with emerging automated design techniques. The workflow presented here is intended as a community resource, and aimed at lowering barriers for the discovery of novel soft actuators by experts and novice users. The data gathered from human-interaction with this tool will be used by future automation tools to enable fully-automated soft actuator design based on high-level specifications.

In this paper, we explore a new class of electric motor-driven compliant actuators based on handed shearing auxetic cylinders. This technique combines the benefits of compliant bodies from soft robotic actuators with the simplicity of direct coupling to electric motors. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique by creating linear actuators, a four degree-of-freedom robotic platform, and a soft robotic gripper. We compare the soft robotic gripper against a state of the art pneumatic soft gripper, finding similar grasping performance in a significantly smaller and more energy-efficient package.

Impact protection and vibration isolation are an important component of the mobile robot designer's toolkit; however, current damping materials are available only in bulk or molded form, requiring manual fabrication steps and restricting material property control. In this paper we demonstrate a new method for 3D printing viscoelastic materials with specified material properties. This method allows arbitrary net-shape material geometries to be rapidly fabricated and enables continuously varying material properties throughout the finished part. This new ability allows robot designers to tailor the properties of viscoelastic damping materials in order to reduce impact forces and isolate vibrations. We present a case study for using this material to create jumping robots with programmed levels of bouncing.