Chamber Soft Pneumatic Actuator
from Adaptive Systems Lab
This 3 chamber soft pneumatic actuator was developed by Dino Rossi as part of his research into Adaptive Solar Building Facades.
The idea is that this type of soft actuator could be integrated into a facade system in order to orient photovoltaic elements. The orientation of the pv elements could perform both energy harvesting optimization as well as adaptive daylighting control through the implementation of occupant centered control strategies.
In the video the actuator goes through a series of movements (single chamber actuations, dual-chamber actuations, and overlapping chamber actuations) to exhibit its range and types of motion.
This work has been carried out as part of the Adaptive Systems Lab research at SuAT, D-ARCH, ETH Zurich.
Related publication:
Svetoarevic, B., Nagy, Z., Rossi, D., Schlueter, A., (2014). Experimental Characterization of a 2-DOF Soft Robotic Platform for Archtiectural Applications, Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, Workshop on Advances in Soft Robotics, UC Berkeley, California.