Recently, Dielectric Elastomer Actuator(DEA) comes to the market successfully by introducing commercial products such as tactile interfaces for mobile applications. As an advanced application, we present a tactile display device actuated with dielectric elastomer actuator(DEA) in this paper. By employing fluid coupling between the touch spot and the actuator, the device ensures the comfort of touch and the safety of operation from the high driving voltage while contacting with the human skin. In addition, it is compatible with SMT(Surface Mount Technology), which can be easily plugged into PCB(Printed Circuit Board)s like semiconductor chips and extend to the arrayed tactile display, easily. In this paper, its working principle is overviewed and the actual design with fabrication procedures are described in details. Finally, a prototype is made and its performance is evaluated experimentally.

In this paper we present a robotic actuation system by artificial muscle actuator based on dielectric elastomer. A novel linear actuator called “multi-stacked actuator” is presented, which can be embedded in the phalanges of the finger and ensures a compact design of the overall system. As an exemplary work, a two degree-of-freedom robot finger is developed and its performance is experimentally demonstrated. The proposed system can be extended to the multi-fingered robot hand easily, and applied even for articulated mechanisms such as legged robots etc.

As a major human sensory function, the implementation of the tactile sensation for the human-machine interface has been one of the core research interests for long time. In this paper, an innovative tactile display device based on the soft actuator technology is presented. Using electroactive polymer for the construction of the tactile display device, it can provide stimulation on the human skin without any additional electromechanical transmission. Softness and flexibility of the device structure, ease of fabrication, possibility for miniaturization, and low cost for mass production are the representative benefits of the presented device. Especially, the device application is open to many different purposes since the flexible structure offers the excellent adaptability to any contour of the human body. To prove its feasibility, a wearable device that can fit to the distal part of the human finger is presented and its performance is evaluated, experimentally.

In this paper, we present a new artificial muscle actuator for the robotic applications, called multi-stacked actuator. This actuator is made from a new material, named synthetic elastomer previously developed by ourselves. The synthetic elastomer displays enhanced performance in terms of electrical as well as mechanical properties, which can be adjusted depending on its applications. The actuator is composed of the synthetic elastomer sheet coated with compliant electrodes on the both sides, connecting disks, spring, and rigid frame. This novel design enables the actuator to generate the large strain as well as the large force. Experimental works are performed to evaluate the actuation performance and the effectiveness of the actuator is validated.

Tactile sensation is one of the most important sensory functions for human perception of objects. Recently, there have been many technical challenges in the field of tactile sensing as well as tactile display. In this paper, we propose an innovative tactile display device based on soft actuator technology with electroactive polymer (EAP). This device offers advantageous features over existing devices with respect to intrinsic flexibility, softness, ease of fabrication and miniaturization, high power density, and cost effectiveness. In particular, it can be adapted to various geometric configurations because it possesses structural flexibility, so it can be worn on any part of the human body such as finger, palm, and arm etc. It can be extensively applied as a wearable tactile display, a Braille device for the visually disabled, and a human interface in the future. A new design of the flexible actuator is proposed and its basic operational principles are discussed. In addition, a tactile display device with 10times10 actuator array (100 actuator cells) is developed and its effectiveness is confirmed

In this paper we present a packaged actuator to be applied for micro- and macro- robotic applications. The actuator is based on polymer dielectrics, and intrinsically has muscle-like characteristics capable of performing motions such as forward/backward/controllable compliance. The actuator is featured in several aspects such as simplicity and lightness in weight, cost-effectiveness, multiple DOF-actuation, and digital interface. In this paper, its basic concepts are briefly introduced and the issues about design, fabrication and applications are discussed.

In this paper a new soft actuator based on dielectric elastomer is proposed. The actuator, called an antagonistically-driven linear actuator (ANTLA), has the muscle-like characteristics capable of performing the motions such as forward/backward/controllable compliance. Due to its simplicity of configuration and ease of fabrication, it has the advantage to be scale-independently implemented in meso- or micro-scale robotic applications. Its basic concepts are introduced and a quasi-static analysis is performed with experimental verifications.

In this paper a new soft actuator based on dielectric elastomer is proposed. The actuator, called an antagonistically-driven linear actuator (ANTLA), has the muscle-like characteristics capable of performing the motions such as forward/backward/controllable compliance. In this paper, its dynamic analysis is performed with experimental verifications, and applications for robotic actuating devices are introduced.