Soft robotic manipulator, which has advantages of low-weight, flexibility, safe physical interaction, shows a wide prospect in both industry and family application. In this paper, a design of pneumatic soft manipulator, in which the modularization concept is adopted, is presented. The soft manipulator is made up of three pneumatic soft actuators stacked in series. The soft actuator is composed of three inflatable bellows, which are connected and constrained by a series of thin rigid plates. The bellows is stretched by the actuation of pressured gas. The cooperation of the bellows and the rigid constraints effect the soft actuator’s directional move. The stacking connection of several soft actuators can have a large coverage in space. Based on this design, the kinematic models of the soft actuator as well as the soft manipulator are proposed using piecewise constant curvature method. The elastic coefficient of the actuator, which is necessary in the numerical calculation of the proposed model, is determined experimentally. Finally, the prototype and experimental set up of the soft manipulator are designed and developed. The correctness of the proposed model and the end-repeat positioning accuracy are validated experimentally.

具有重量轻，灵活性高，安全的物理交互的优点的软机器人机械手在工业和家庭应用中都具有广阔的前景。本文提出了一种采用模块化概念的气动软操纵器设计。软操纵器由三个串联的气动软执行器组成。软执行器由三个充气波纹管组成，它们由一系列薄的刚性板连接并受其约束。波纹管通过压力气体的驱动而拉伸。波纹管的配合和刚性约束影响了软执行器的定向运动。多个软执行器的堆叠连接可以在空间上大面积覆盖。基于此设计，运用分段恒曲率法提出了软执行器及软操纵器的运动学模型。实验确定执行器的弹性系数，该系数在所提出的模型的数值计算中是必需的。最后，设计并开发了软操纵器的原型和实验装置。实验验证了所提模型的正确性和重复定位的准确性。