Design and Finite Element Analysis of Pneumatically Actuated Soft Gripper under Combined Positive and Negative Pressure

Soft-bending actuators have garnered significant interest in robotics and biomedical engineering due to their ability to mimic the bending motions of natural organisms. Using either positive or negative pressure, most soft pneumatic actuators for bending actuation have modified their design accordingly. In this study, we propose a novel soft bending actuator that utilizes combined positive and negative pressures to achieve enhanced performance and control. The actuator consists of a flexible elastomeric chamber divided into two compartments: a positive pressure chamber and a negative pressure chamber. Controlled bending motion can be achieved by selectively applying positive and negative pressures to the respective chambers. The combined positive and negative pressure allowed for faster response times and increased flexibility compared to traditional soft actuators. Because of its adaptability, controllability, and improved performance can be used for various jobs that call for careful handling or compliant environmental contact. The actuator's simple design and cost-effective manufacturing process contribute to its practicality and scalability. The modeling and conducting simulations on a soft robotic combined positive and negative pressure actuator also aim to design an adaptive soft-robotic gripper with reduced effort and investigate the up scaling of such grippers to extend their applicability to heavy payload handling and assembly. Once the results from simulations and experiments conducted by models are collaborated, the geometrical parameters are modified to get improved results. The improved model is compared in terms of pressure range, bending angle, versatility, and weight-carrying capacity. Simulation is done on Ansys for real-time results. The parametric study helps in establishing correlations between pressure and deflections to accurately control the motion of soft grippers