2004 EAPAD Conference, San Diego, California, USA
MODERATOR: Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Chair, EAPAD Conference
This Session that is held annually as part of
the SPIE’s
EAPAD conference is intended to turn the spotlight on Electroactive
Polymers (EAP) materials and their applications as well as increase the
recognition of their potential. New
materials and applications are continuing to emerge and this session provides
the attendees an opportunity to see a demonstration of the latest EAP materials
in action. This Session offers a forum
of interaction between the technology developers and potential users as well as
a "hands-on" experience with this emerging technology. It is a great opportunity to see the
capability of the state-of-the-art of EAP as potential actuators-of-choice. It is anticipated that the first Human/EAP-Robot
Armwrestling Competition will be held is a future forum of this session
where this year for the first time we will have a presentation of an arm that
can perform a wrestling motion.
Title and details |
Presenters |
A wrestling robotic
arm driven by EAP (ionic polymeric contractile PAN) - This wrestling arm
will have the size and the configuration of an average human arm. It is equipped with artificial muscles made
of conductive polyacrylonitrile (PAN-C) that
produce close to 200% linear strain and have pulling strength better than
human muscles. ERI
will demonstrate the wrestling robotic arm and also show an array of their
EAP products in live action. |
Mohsen Shahinpoor
shah@environmental-robots.com
and Massoud
Ahghar mahghar@environmental-robots.com - Environmental Robots Incorporated (ERI),
909 Virginia, NE., |
Polypyrrole-Based Finger Actuators in Air |
Patrick Anquetil,
Nate Vandesteeg, and
Rachel Zimet
- Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT), |
Self-assembled membrane materials and their
use as electrodes on EAP actuators |
Rick Claus and Sherri Box, NanoSonic,
Inc., |
Liquid Crystalline Elastomers
as Artificial Muscles (Video and samples) - Action and extension of LC fiber mounted
inside a heating coil will be shown. The upper end of the fiber is fixed and
a specific load is attached to the lower end. The fiber is heated by passing
current through a Nichrome coil. When the temperature is increased above the
nematic-isotropic transition temperature, the fiber
contracts and is able to lift the weight. The induced strain is 40% of the
original length. |
Jawad Naciri, Amritha Srinivasan*, and Banahalli R Ratna Center for Bio/Molecular Science and
Engineering, Naval Research Laboratory, *Geo-Centers, Inc. |
Artificial Muscles: From Creatures to Products SRI and AMI will demonstrate a variety of
actuators and enabled devices based on its electroelastomers
(a.k.a. dielectric elastomer artificial muscles). These electroactive
polymers exhibit electrically-driven strains up to 380%. The displays will include
a walking robot and swimming fish that use the unique multi-degree-of-freedom
bending roll actuators for propulsion, a quiet yet powerful rotary motor, a
thickness-mode actuator for control of surface texture. |
Qibing Pei, Scott
Stanford, Marcus Rosenthal, Jon Heim, Roy Kornbluh, Ron Pelrine, Harsha Prahlad, and Neville Bonwit, Philip von Guggenberg - SRI International, 333 Ravenswood
Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 Alex Beavers, CEO - Artificial Muscle
Inc (AMI), |
Terpolymers and a micro-pump -video and sample |
Qiming Zhang, |
Carbon Nanotube
EAP actuators – samples
and video |
Liming Dai, University of Akron, and
prabhu Soundarrajan, Applied Nanotechnology, |
EAP Testbench
Android - An expressive
humanoid robot face with a porous poly(urethane-urea)
elastomer skin that requires decreased force to actuate into expressive
deformations, relative to solid elastomers, will be
presented. This approach lowers the
bar of entry for EAP actuators into facial expression robotics. Also, samples
of engineered pore-geometry elastomer materials (EPGEMs)
will demonstrate that the benefits of such materials may be extended into
other classes of polymers, including silicones and thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs). |
David Hanson, University Victor White, Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
NASA/CalTech, |
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