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The inherent compliance of soft robots often makes it difficult for them to exert forces on surrounding surfaces or withstand mechanical loading. Controlled stiffness is a solution to empower soft robots with the ability to apply large forces on their environments and sustain external loads without deformations. Herein, a compact, soft actuator composed of a shared electrode used for both electrostatic actuation and variable stiffness is described. The device operates as a dielectric elastomer actuator, while variable stiffness is provided by a shared electrode made of gallium. The fabricated actuator, namely variable stiffness dielectric elastomer actuator (VSDEA), has a compact and lightweight structure with a thickness of 930 μm and a mass of 0.7 g. It exhibits a stiffness change of 183×, a bending angle of 31°, and a blocked force of 0.65 mN. Thanks to the lightweight feature, the stiffness change per mass of the actuator (261× g−1) is 2.6 times higher than that of the other type of VSDEA that has no shared electrode.
Yves Perriard, Yoan René Cyrille Civet, Thomas Guillaume Martinez, Stefania Maria Aliki Konstantinidi, Armando Matthieu Walter, Simon Holzer
Dario Floreano, Bokeon Kwak, Markéta Pankhurst, Jun Shintake, Ryo Kanno