Fast return and full elastic recovery in self-healing elastomers for soft robotic actuation
Résumé
Soft robotics is an emergent branch of robotics, which involves incorporation of elastomeric elements. Addition of soft materials into robotic devices allows better flexibility and adaptability to the environment than when robots are made of hard and rigid components. However, the soft materials are more prone to damage than their rigid counterparts. Incorporation of self-healing materials into soft robots may permit to fix damages. Equipped with a sensor, the robot could also be able to detect the damage to initiate the repairing process autonomously.
In this work, fibre strain sensors were integrated into self-healing elastomers. It is shown that the stiffness of the soft matrix and the sensor fibre should be close enough to avoid a premature rupture of the fibre due to shear stress at the matrix-fibre interface. Elastomeric matrices based on epoxidized natural rubber (ENR) capable of healing after damage were produced. For damage and deformation detection, the elastomer was filled with conductive carbon black to produce piezo-resistive strain sensors. Laser-cut sensor fibres were implemented into a compression sensor. The resulting actuator exhibited fast elastic return and recovery of mechanical and electrical properties after cut and self-healing.
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