I worked on the development of a novel soft actuator design inspired by the hydrostatic lengthening of the chameleon tongue. This project was developed during my time at the Harvard Wyss Institute. Chameleon tongues utilize a collagen sheath to lengthen their tongues along a hyoid bone in order to build up elastic energy. Once sufficiently extended, the built up energy is released and the tongue is projected forwards at high speeds. In order to duplicate this, I designed and fabricated a multi segment soft robotic actuator that mimics the different stages of the tongue energy build up and release. A forward segment hold on to the artificial "bone", a middle segment extends, building up elastic energy, and a back segment acts as an anchor to hold the actuator in place until the energy is to be released. This actuator was able to reach a peak speed of 1.1m/s with a peak acceleration of 2.4m/s².
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