Development of Spring-Supported Flexible Pneumatic Actuators  with Vertical Flexibility

Himena TAHARA, FeiFei CHO, Tetsuya AKAGI, Shujiro DOHTA, Takashi SHINOHARA, Masashi YOKOTA

The 12th JFPS International Symposium on Fluid Power HIROSHIMA 2024

Japan Fluid Power System Society

HIROSHIMA

In caring for the elderly and people with disabilities, the periodic repositioning of the patient's body is essential to prevent bedsores. These complex works put excessive mental and physical strain on caregivers. However, conventional actuators have the problem of being inflexible under vertical loads. In this study, a spring-supported flexible pneumatic actuator with a coil spring as a part of the structure is proposed and investigated with the aim of developing a vertically flexible soft actuator. In addition to the radial bending and vertical extension, the development of an actuator that generates a rotational motion around a vertical axis will be is also proposed and  investigated.