Design and Fabrication of a Low-Cost Silicone and Water-Based Soft Actuator with a High Load-to-Weight Ratio.

Traditional actuators, such as motors as well as hydraulic or pneumatic artificial muscles, demonstrate excessive noise, a heavy weight, and a large size, which limit their practical application in many areas. Therefore, for many decades, scientists have worked to develop new types of silent, small, and light actuators. In this article, a novel soft actuator (actuator3) with a high load-to-weight ratio from silicone and a low-boiling liquid (ethanol: actuator3E or water: actuator3W) is presented and is compared with two actuators (actuator1 and actuator2) fabricated according to a method described in the literature. Compared with actuator1 and actuator2, actuator3 shows a larger volume expansion, output force, and load-to-weight ratio when heated. Owing to the weaker stability and repeatability of actuator3E, many different kinds of applications based on actuator3W are proposed, such as robotic hands and underwater rolling robots with color variations. The experimental results demonstrate that the method proposed in this article may be a viable alternative for fabricating low-cost soft actuators with high load-to-weight ratios that can be useful for future applications of soft robots.