All 3D printed ready-to-use flexible electroadhesion pads.

Electroadhesion is a promising adhesion mechanism widely employed in robotics with advantages including enhanced adaptability, gentle/flexible handling, reduced complexity, and ultralow energy consumption. Currently, all electroadhesion pads are manually fabricated, which limits their applications. In contrast, new, easy-to-implement, cost-effective, and entirely 3D printed flexible electroadhesion pads made of both non-conductive polylactide and graphene conductive polylactide are presented in this paper. Moreover, their statics model for geometric dimensions and flexibility is established via the pseudo rigid body model. Then, normal electroadhesion force measurements and electrostatic simulation of the flexible electroadhesive pads are conducted. Finally, a 3D printed curvature adjustable gripper based on flexible electroadhesive pads that can actively grasp flat, concave, and convex objects is presented. These FEPs are expected to widen the preparation technology and increase the use of electroadhesion in soft robots application. This paper presents easy-to-implement, cost-effective, and fully 3D printed flexible electroadhesion pads (FEPs) made of both non-conductive polylactide and graphene conductive polylactide, and a fully 3D printed curvature adjustable gripper based on FEPs has been also presented, and which can actively grasp flat, concave and convex objects. [Display omitted] • New, easy-to-implement, and cost-effective fully 3D printed flexible electroadhesion pads made of both non-conductive PLA and graphene conductive PLA have be designed. • Pseudo rigid body model used to establish the statics model of geometric dimensions and the flexibility. • Normal electroadhesion force measurements are conducted on electroadhesion pads with different radius of curvature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]