Origami Actuator with Tunable Limiting Layer for Morphological Adaptive Soft Robots

This article presents an origami actuator with a tunable limiting layer based on hybrid pneumatic and motor actuation. The main structure of the actuator is based on the Miura origami structure with a strain-limiting layer. Under air pressurization, the Miura origami actuator performs outward stretching deformation. A servomotor, which drives the limiting layer, can adjust its length on-demand. With combination of Miura origami actuator and a limiting layer with tunable length, reprogramming of the actuator is realized. The actuator outputs outward extension and inward bending with different limiting layer lengths and achieves an adjustable bending angle from 28.5° to 171.9°. To verify the capability of the proposed actuator in terms of manipulation and motion, a soft robotic gripper, a crawling robot, and an amphibious robot were built based on this actuator design. The experiments show that origami actuators with tunable limiting layer can reconfigure their morphology to better adapt to different environments in the application of soft robots.