The past decade has witnessed tremendous progress in the field of robotics research, especially under manipulation environments Compared to rigid-bodied robots, soft robots possess the characteristics of safety, adaptability, flexibility, and compatibility, benefitted from their inherent compliance. As a consequence, soft robotic technologies have been used under manipulation and locomotion environments for the development of service robots, surgical robots, collaborative robots, etc. Nevertheless, further development of manipulation robots faces many challenges that must be addressed before their widespread applications.

The major challenges include: (1) non-collaborative interaction with humans due to the inherent intolerance of rigid-bodied robotic arms. (2) inability of soft grippe...[ Read more ]

The past decade has witnessed tremendous progress in the field of robotics research, especially under manipulation environments Compared to rigid-bodied robots, soft robots possess the characteristics of safety, adaptability, flexibility, and compatibility, benefitted from their inherent compliance. As a consequence, soft robotic technologies have been used under manipulation and locomotion environments for the development of service robots, surgical robots, collaborative robots, etc. Nevertheless, further development of manipulation robots faces many challenges that must be addressed before their widespread applications.

The major challenges include: (1) non-collaborative interaction with humans due to the inherent intolerance of rigid-bodied robotic arms. (2) inability of soft grippers to offer adequate stiffness/strength as rigid counterparts due to the high deformability of materials utilized. (3) lack of shape control of fingertip to enhance stability and dexterity (4) lack of rapid and inexpensive manufacturing methods.

Aimed to address these challenges, under-actuated reconfigurable structures, in particular, programmable designs for soft pneumatic bellows-shaped actuators with distinct motions, are explored in Part I of the thesis, thus a wide range of functionalities engendered through tuning channel parameters. A closed-loop design approach is generated for motion trajectory customization with tunable channel profiles. Moreover, a design of bio-inspired soft robotic fingers is studied in Part II, based upon hybrid jamming principle - integrated layer jamming and particle jamming, being capable of simultaneous bending shape control and stillness modulation. In addition, an under-actuated origami-based shape morphing fingertip design is also presented in Part III, to actively tackle the grasping stability and dexterity problems. Furthermore, automatic fabrication processes (based on additive manufacturing) are developed for such manipulators.

Research in this thesis is expected to provide new insights into the development of under-actuated reconfigurable robots under manipulation environments endowed with automatic fabrication, and pave a way for designing a series of function-oriented manipulators in an automatic flow.