For a soft microrobot that works in narrow and complex space such as inside of pipelines in industrial plants, we propose atwo-DOFs soft microactuator integrated with flexible ER microvalves (FERVs). The proposed actuator has two one-DOFbending microactuators connected in series. The bending microactuator has two chambers inside, each of which is connected toan FERV and its pressure is controlled through apparent viscosity change of an electro-rheological fluid (ERF) with the appliedvoltage. In this paper, first, the bending microactuator made from PDMS is designed and optimized through FEM simulations.Second, the bending microactuaor is fabricated and its bending characteristics are experimentally clarified with the applied airpressure. Third, the FERV is fabricated by photolithography using UV-curable PDMS and SU-8 for the structure and UV-curablePEDOT:PSS for the electrodes. Finally, the bending characteristics of the two-DOFs microactuator are investigated.
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