Design and Fabrication of Silicone-based Dielectric Elastomer Rolled Actuators for Soft Robotic Applications

In this work we present a new concept for scalable and tightly rolled dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA). The proposed solution is motivated by the need for designing soft, high energy density, and compact actuators for soft robotics and artificial muscle applications. Each rolled DEA is made starting from a 50 mu m thin silicone film (Wacker Elastosil 2030) with flexible carbon-black based electrodes screen-printed on one side. Two of those printed films are first stacked and subsequently tightly rolled, leading to the final DEA design. At first, the systematic development of the rolled DEA concept is presented. Electrical and mechanical contacts are provided by off-the-shelf wire end ferrules. The roll manufacturing process is described subsequently. Finally, an experimental evaluation of mechanical and electrical characteristics of the developed DEAs is performed. Our measurements show a change of blocking force of 0.18 N under constant load conditions and we predict a stroke of 2.5% at 2 N.