Yu She

Department of Mechanical and Design and Fabrication of a Soft

Aerospace Engineering,
The Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH 43210
Robotic Hand With Embedded
e-mail: she.22@osu.edu

Chang Li
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Tsinghua University,
Beijing 100084, China
e-mail: lichang427@sina.com
Jonathon Cleary
Department of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering,
The Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH 43210
e-mail: cleary.77@osu.edu
Hai-Jun Su1
Mem. ASME
Department of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering,
The Ohio State University,
Columbus, OH 43210
e-mail: su.298@osu.edu
Actuators and Sensors
This paper details the design and fabrication process of a fully integrated soft humanoid
robotic hand with five finger that integrate an embedded shape memory alloy (SMA) actu-
ator and a piezoelectric transducer (PZT) flexure sensor. Several challenges including
precise control of the SMA actuator, improving power efficiency, and reducing actuation
current and response time have been addressed. First, a Ni-Ti SMA strip is pretrained to
a circular shape. Second, it is wrapped with a Ni-Cr resistance wire that is coated with
thermally conductive and electrically isolating material. This design significantly reduces
actuation current, improves circuit efficiency, and hence reduces response time and
increases power efficiency. Third, an antagonistic SMA strip is used to improve the shape
recovery rate. Fourth, the SMA actuator, the recovery SMA strip, and a flexure sensor
are inserted into a 3D printed mold which is filled with silicon rubber materials. The flex-
ure sensor feeds back the finger shape for precise control. Fifth, a demolding process
yields a fully integrated multifunctional soft robotic finger. We also fabricated a hand
assembled with five fingers and a palm. We measured its performance and specifications
with experiments. We demonstrated its capability of grasping various kinds of regular or
irregular objects. The soft robotic hand is very robust and has a large compliance, which
makes it ideal for use in an unstructured environment. It is inherently safe to human oper-
ators as it can withstand large impacts and unintended contacts without causing any
injury to human operators or damage to the environment. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4029497]

1 Introduction widely used in a variety of areas, including robotics. Mavroidis

[11] developed advanced actuators with SMA and other smart
Conventional rigid body manipulators produce high accuracy
materials. Seok et al. [12] presented a soft robotic platform which
of movements through kinematic joints which have finite degrees
exhibits peristaltic locomotion with the Ni-Ti coil actuators. Icardi
of freedom (DOF). They are generally used in well-defined envi-
[13] used SMA contractile wires to build a large bending actuator.
ronments and touch/force sensors are required to prevent damage
Zhang et al. [14] studied self-sensing properties for SMA actuated
to the grasped object. Recently, soft robots [1,2] have received
artificial muscle. Paik and Wood [15] developed a bidirectional
increasing attention due to their obvious advantages of high flexi-
SMA folding actuator with application to mesoscale and micro-
bility and safety for human operators. Soft robotics [3,4] has a
scale systems. Liu et al. [16] studied tracking control of SMA
great potential to be applied to service and personal robots, since
actuators based on inverse hysteresis compensation and self-
they are inherently safe, meaning that they are so compliant that
sensing feedback. Wang et al. [17] also studied the control method
they are not capable of causing injury to human operators even in
of the SMA based on self-sensing and hysteresis compensation.
unstructured environments [1].
Bergamasco et al. [18] presented a dexterous artificial hand with
Design, fabrication, and precise control of soft robots are con-
SMA wires. Lee et al. [19] developed a prosthetic hand with five
siderably challenging, however. In the aspect of design, soft
fingers by using SMA. Hino and Maeno [20] developed 1/4 scaled
robots are most likely a continuum rather than rigid bodies con-
miniature robot fingers with SMA. Yang and Gu [21] presented a
nected with kinematic joints like in conventional robotic manipu-
robot hand with embedded SMA as actuator. Dilibal et al. [22]
lators. In terms of manufacturing, fabrication of soft robots is also
presented a three finger robot hand with SMA as the actuator.
extremely challenging because the traditional way of machining
However, almost all SMA actuators use SMA wires which are
parts and assembling them simply does not apply. Precise control
limited by the maximum strain and output force. Although the fin-
of output force and configuration for soft robots is a difficult task
ger in Ref. [22] provided a high output force, it requires the input
even when feedback sensors are present. This is mainly because
power of 300 W.
soft robots have infinite DOF and rely on material deformation for
With regard to manufacturing, the emerging of several rapid
controlling their position.
prototyping (RP) techniques in recent years has made the fabrica-
In terms of structural design, the traditional design process usu-
tion of soft or compliant robots much simpler. Examples are shape
ally follows the steps of designing individual parts, assembling
deposition manufacturing (SDM) [23,24], laser cutting [25,26],
parts into subsystems and putting subsystems together. The struc-
3D printing, etc. The SDM approach is an RP technique which is
tural material of soft robots is typically very compliant, e.g., rub-
able to fabricate heterogeneous structures, such as multimaterial
ber. The compliance must be carefully designed to allow desired
structures with embedded components. Many robots have been
motion while restricting motions in other directions.
made using these techniques. Examples are the SDM hand by
Actuator design is one of the most important tasks in designing
Dollar et al. [27,28], a force sensing robot finger [29], a compliant
soft robots. For example, actuator techniques for soft robots
robotic hand with pneumatic actuators [4,30].
include compressed air [5,6], SMA actuators, liquid [7,8], and ten-
In this paper, we present a robotic hand with five soft fully inte-
dons [9,10]. SMA actuators have been extensively explored and
grated fingers made of silicone rubber material. To address the
challenge of actuator design, thin SMA strips rather than wires are
1 used. They are pretrained to a circular shape for bending moment
Corresponding author.
Manuscript received August 17, 2014; final manuscript received December 23, output. To enhance the shape recovery, an antagonistic SMA strip
2014; published online February 27, 2015. Assoc. Editor: Aaron M. Dollar. (trained to the opposed direction) is used. To improve the power

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C 2015 by ASME MAY 2015, Vol. 7 / 021007-1

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Fig. 1 The conceptual design of the soft robotic hand
efficiency, a resistance wire is wrapped around the SMA strips for
indirect heating. A flexure sensor is used to sense the shape of the
SMA strips for feedback control. This novel SMA design features
high power efficiency and precise shape control.
We begin this paper with an introduction of design of the
robotic hand in Sec. 2. The fabrication process of the robotic hand
is presented in Sec. 3. In Sec. 4, measurement and control experi-
ments are conducted to evaluate the performance of our design
and fabrication. Also, in this section, specifications of this design
and comparisons with other design are discussed. Finally, conclu-
sions and future work are presented in Sec. 5.
2 The Design of Soft Robotic Hand
The conceptual design of the soft humanoid robotic hand is
shown in Fig. 1. The robotic hand is composed of a palm and five
fingers. Each finger comprised six components: A full width SMA
strip for actuation; a half-width antagonistic SMA strip for shape
recovery; a Ni-Cr resistance wire for thermally actuating the
SMA; a PZT flexure sensor for shape feedback; the soft finger
body made of silicone rubber; and the relatively rigid fingertip
made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). The PDMS tip is strong
enough to hold the two pieces of SMAs from tearing the wrapped
material apart. The roots of the SMAs are fixed on the palm which
is fabricated out of the acrylic material by a laser cutter. The
Table 1 Parameters and circuit efficiency for three actuator designs
Full width SMA via direct Two half-width SMAs in serial
heating
Dimensions (mm) Length ¼ 80
Width ¼ 5.588
Thickness ¼ 0.508
Mass (g) 1.3
Resistance (X) 0.041
Circuit efficiency (%) 6.25
Response time (s) 7 4.2
Current (A) 9.5
Voltage (V) 5 5.2
Power (W) 47.5
021007-2 / Vol. 7, MAY 2015
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function of each component will be discussed in the following
passage in detail.
2.1 The SMA Actuator Design. When heated to a critical
temperature, SMA materials can return to the previously trained
shape via a phase transformation from Martensite to Austenite. As
a result, they are often used as actuators for output force or
moment. For our robotic finger application, we need an actuator
that can produce a large bending moment. Instead of using SMA
wires or coils like in many other applications, we utilize SMA
strips with a rectangular cross section due to their advantages of
relatively large actuation moment, large bending angle, and com-
pactness, since there is no need for a mechanism converting force
to moment.
In our design, Ni-Ti Alloy is selected to be the suitable type of
SMA due to its superiority to other types of SMA in many aspects,
including relatively large strain (6% maximum shape memory
strain), high power density (25 times electric motors), and small
Young’s modulus at low temperatures (28–41 Gpa). An SMA
strip can return fully to its original shape when no resistance force
is applied. However, for the robotic finger design, the resistance
force from silicon rubber finger body and the flexure sensor pre-
vents full recovery. To improve the shape recovery rate, a half-
width SMA strip that is trained in the opposite bending direction
is used. This design can achieve nearly 100% shape recovery, i.e.,
return the finger close to a straight position.
We compared three different designs of actuator based upon
SMA strips. In the first design, current is directly applied to the
one wide SMA (80 mm long, 5.588 mm wide, and 0.508 mm
thick). Because the electric resistance of this SMA strip is very
small 0.041 X, the current required to actuate the SMA strips
would be too high. This high current causes a very low circuit effi-
ciency (due to energy loss in the circuit and wires). In the second
design, two narrow width (2.5 mm wide) SMAs connected in
serial. This design increases the resistance four times. However,
the current is still too high for this actuator. The third actuator
design uses a Ni-Cr resistance wire for indirect heating. The cir-
cuit efficiency reaches 95.59% of this design, which is signifi-
cantly higher than that of the full width SMA (6.25%). See Table
1 for design parameters of all three designs. The resistance from
the power and circuit wire is measured about 0.6 X.
Response time in terms of current/power is also compared
among these three designs. The input current or power of the third
actuator is far less than directly heating SMA. More specifically,
the first actuator needs 9.5 A (47.5 W) to reach a response time of
7 s, while the third actuator requires 0.5 A (3.25 W) to obtain a
response time of 5 s. Given an input current of 0.5 A (3.25 W) for
all three actuators, the response time for the third actuator is 5 s,
while the first and second actuators cannot be actuated with a cur-
rent of 0.5 A (3.25 W). It is possible to further reduce the response
time by increasing input current. However, the minimum response
Full width SMA via indirect heating
via direct heating with a Ni-Cr wire
Length ¼ 160 Diameter ¼ 0.2743
Width ¼ 2.5 Length ¼ 1000
Thickness ¼ 0.508
0.55 1.6
0.21 13
25.93 95.59
5
7.5 0.5
6.5
39 3.25
Transactions of the ASME
 Fig. 2 The actuation and shape recovery cycle of the SMA
actuator: (a) initial position, (b) grasping position, and
(c) releasing position
time of the third actuator is limited by the coating material of the
resistance wire, which will be explained later.
Figure 2 shows the actuation process. During the actuation pe-
riod, the full width SMA is active, which needs to overcome the
resistance force of silicon finger body, flexure sensor, and the
half-width shape recovery SMA strip. During the recovery period,
the full width SMA is deactivated and the half-width SMA is
activated.
2.2 Resistance Wire Wrapping for Indirect Heating. As
mentioned in Sec. 2.1, directly driving the SMA strips with cur-
rent gives a very low power efficiency due to their extremely low
electric resistance. To reduce the actuation current, we wrap a re-
sistance wire around an SMA strip in a dense coil form for indi-
rect heating (see Fig. 3).
We selected Ni-Cr material for the resistance wire because it
has a relatively large resistance ð1:5  106 X  mÞ, about 15
times of Ni-Ti SMA and 90 times of copper. Using the Ni-Cr re-
sistance wire significantly reduces the actuation current to 0.6 A at
7 V for a full actuation. The response time is also significantly
reduced compared with the actuation method of directly applying
current. Therefore, energy efficiency is significantly improved.
This design also offers benefits of reduced fabrication cost and
time and improved structural integrity of the robotic finger.
However, Ni-Cr resistance wire cannot be directly wound
around the SMA strip because it will cause a short circuit prob-
lem. To address this problem, a thin coating of arctic silver ther-
mal epoxy, which has high thermal conductivity and negligible
electrical conductivity, is applied on the surface of the resistance
wire. The latter step is important because it allows us wind the
resistance wire very densely. Since the Ni-Cr resistance wire has a
small diameter, it will not significantly affect the compactness of
the finger. Moreover, the resistance wire is carefully arranged
around the SMA strip in a dense manner; therefore, the strip can
be heated as evenly as the direct heating method.
2.3 The Flexure Sensor for Finger Shape Feedback. Self-
sensing of SMA has previously been studied for providing a feed-
back of strain change [14,16,17]. However, the inherent hysteresis
property of SMA has made it a challenge to realize accurate con-
trol directly without modeling and using a complicated algorithm
to fit an approximate relationship between strain and temperature.
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Fig. 3 The schematic of the full integrated soft robotic finger
Furthermore, since the resistance of SMA strips is too small, com-
plex and costly electronic devices will be needed to monitor the
change of resistance in the self-sensing method.
In our design, flexure sensors, which are cheap and easy to
operate, are used for the shape feedback without significant
adverse effects on the finger body. A feedback signal can be gen-
erated by the flexure sensor as the finger deforms, which plays a
vital role in precise control of finger position. The flexure sensor
features high flexibility and a low profile and thus only introduces
a small resistance force to the finger. Moreover, its simple con-
struction and small volume does not adversely affect the compact-
ness of our design. The flexure sensor also can be simply
integrated into the soft finger prototype during fabrication, which
will be discussed below.
2.4 The Design of Soft Finger Body With a Firm Finger-
tip. Ecoflex-30 is chosen as the suitable type of silicone rubber
for our application. Its large maximum elongation ratio (900%
before break) and good tensile strength (1.378 Mpa) makes it easy
for the SMA strips to actuate the soft finger without causing frac-
ture failure and still maintaining the size and shape of a human
finger. Furthermore, Ecoflex-30 demonstrates good aging and
fatigue properties, ensuring the reliability and life of the soft fin-
ger. This material also suits the actuation of SMA through heating
in that it adapts well to a wide temperature range (from 100  C
to 300  C).
A successful finger body design must satisfy the following
requirements:
(1) it must retain the position of SMA strips and flexure sensor;
(2) it has a sufficient structural flexibility and little resistance
force for SMA strips to bend;
(3) it must thermally isolate the actuation SMA strip and the
shape recovery SMA strip;
(4) it has decent heat dissipation; and
(5) it must be compact in size with a humanoid finger shape.
Despite that a solid fingertip made of Ecoflex-30 is able to con-
strain the relative displacement of the ends of the SMA strips to
some extent, small displacements of the terminal part of the SMA
inside the fingertip can still be observed in the complete flexion
situation. Although the displacement does not affect the function
of grasping, full flexion, and extension of the hand, it proposes the
problem of repeatability.
To better retain the position of component parts in the finger
body, PDMS is used as a substitute for the Ecoflex-30 as the
MAY 2015, Vol. 7 / 021007-3
 fingertip material. Both PDMS and Ecoflex-30 are commonly
referred to as silicone, though PDMS is more rigid than Ecoflex-
30. That property makes the PDMS a better choice for fixing the
end of SMA strip. When the SMA strip is heated and actuates the
soft finger to bend, the hard PDMS fingertip limits the deforma-
tion of the terminal part of SMA with respect to the other compo-
nents. Given that the other end of SMA strip is fixed to the palm,
the relative position of the embedded components and the silicone
rubber finger body remains unchanged after repeated flexion and
extension of the finger. Since the fabrication process of Ecoflex-
30 and that of PDMS are very similar, using PDMS to make the
fingertip does not bring extra complexity to the original fabrica-
tion process.
3 The Fabrication Process
3.1 Overview. For our application, one key consideration is
to simplify the fabrication process of the soft robotic hand; at the
same time, reliable function and repeated performance are always
the first priority. As shown in Fig. 4, the fabrication process can
be divided into the following steps:
(1) Train the SMA strip to the desired shape for actuating the
finger (not shown in this figure).
(2) Apply a thin layer of thermal adhesive to the surface of the
two SMA strips of different width as shown in Fig. 4(a).
(3) Coat the Ni-Cr resistance wire with arctic silver thermal
epoxy and wind it evenly and tightly around the SMA
strips, as shown in Fig. 4(b). Figure 4(c) shows the outline
of the flexure sensor.
(4) 3D print the acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) molds as
shown in Fig. 4(d). After the SMA strips and flexure sensor
are set in the proper positions in the molds, we use tape to
fix the relative position of different mold parts and embed-
ded components, then silicone material is used to manufac-
ture the finger body, Figs. 4(e) and 4(f).
(5) Demold the finger after liquid Ecoflex-30 has cured,
Fig. 4(g).
(6) Make five fingers by repeating the procedure above.
(7) Fabricate a palm out of the acrylic plastic material by a
laser cutter.
(8) Fix five fingers to the palm to form a fully functional
robotic hand. The final soft humanoid finger is shown in
Fig. 4(h).
Fig. 4 The overview of the fabrication process for the fully integrated robotic hand
021007-4 / Vol. 7, MAY 2015
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In what follows, we provide the details of several key steps of
the fabrication process.
3.2 SMA Training. Before the raw SMA strips are integrated
into the finger prototype, a “training” process is necessary. The
training of an SMA strip begins with fixing it to a circular shape
with a diameter of 20 mm, as shown on the left of Fig. 5. The fixed
shape is what we want to train the strip to tend toward when
heated and is designed to simulate the flexion of real finger. After
fixing the SMA strip in the desired circular shape, it is put inside
an oven to anneal at a temperature of around 500  C for
15–20 min, then quenched in cold water. Once the raw SMA strip
is trained, it is in Martensite phase and soft (around 28–41 Gpa)
under room temperature. So it can be easily straightened from the
trained shape, as shown in the middle of Fig. 5. When it is heated
and the temperature is greater than the Austenite transformation
start temperature, the SMA gradually transfers from Martensite to
Austenite. It can recover the trained shape under Austenite trans-
formation finish temperature (90  C) with zero external load, as
shown on the right of Fig. 5.
However, in our design, the SMA is wrapped in the silicon fin-
ger body, and a flexure sensor is also wrapped in the finger. Both
of them provide a resistance force to the SMA. As a result, the
SMA cannot return to the fully trained position. This is well
known as the shape recovery problem. To address this challenge,
the SMA strip is overtrained. Then, a separate opposing SMA
strip is used to recover to the original finger shape.
3.3 Resistance Wire Coating and Twinning. The process of
fabricating insulated SMA strips and resistance wire begins with
mixing the viscous liquid-state adhesive with the curing agent.
Then the mixed liquid adhesive is applied to the surface of the re-
sistance wire and SMA strip. It takes several hours for the adhe-
sive to cure, usually 4 hr at room temperature. Moreover, the cure
time could be reduced at warmer temperature, which should be
limited below 49  C. After that, the resistance wire is wound care-
fully around the SMA strip in a dense coil form (see Fig. 6).
3.4 Fabrication of the Mold. The mold is essential for the
rapid fabrication of the fully integrated soft robotic finger. It is
used to contain the liquid of the Ecoflex-30 and hold the SMA
strips and flexure sensor in order to integrate the whole system.
Transactions of the ASME

Fig. 5 Trained shape of the SMA strip
Proper mold structure is a key factor in holding embedded compo-
nents and outer finger body in position.
Figure 7 shows the mold used in our manufacturing process. It
consists of three components: The narrow and long strip, the wide
and long cuboid, and the head. The ribs on the narrow and long
strip create the partially hollow structure in the middle of the fin-
ger, a very small slot (1 mm width) in the middle of each rib is
responsible for positioning the thin flexure sensor. The semicircu-
lar ribbed structure of the soft finger is created by the semicircle
slot in the cuboid mold. The four small bulges of the wide and
long cuboid mold are to fix the position of the two SMA strips.
The head mold is to shape the fingertip.
All three mold parts are manufactured by a Makerbot Replica-
tor 2 3D printer in ABS plastic material. After all mold parts are
fabricated, they are assembled together into a full mold. Duct tape
is wrapped around the mold to avoid liquid leakage in the next
fabrication step. See the right part of Fig. 7.
3.5 Fabrication of the Finger Body and Tip. Two soft
materials are included in the manufacture of the soft humanoid
robotic hand; they are Ecoflex-30 and PDMS, respectively. The
former one is to make the pliable finger body and solid finger
root, PMDS is used for the rigid fingertip. Both of them are classi-
fied as silicone rubber materials.
Based on the design process above, the silicone rubber finger
coating (different from the SMA coating—arctic silver thermal
epoxy) is fabricated as shown in Fig. 8. The flexure sensor is in
the middle part of the finger coating and the SMA strips are
arranged on the front and back sides. The terminals of both SMA
Fig. 6 The coating and winding process of the SMA strip and
the resistance wire
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Fig. 7 The 3D printed mold parts (left) and the complete
assembled mold (right)
strips and the flexure sensor are fixed in the tip and to the root of
the finger, which secures the relative position of the finger coating
and the embedded components without negatively influencing the
compliant property of the whole mechanism.
As shown in Fig. 8, the structure of the middle part is one key
element of the finger design, it is partially hollow in the directions
of both length and width. The hollow structure in the middle plays
an important role in thermal isolation between the actuator SMA
strip and the shape recovery SMA strip. Also the hollow structure
makes it easier for the SMA strips to bend, hence a large range of
flexion and a relatively large grasping force.
Concerning the semicircle ribbed structure for the front and
back sides of the soft finger, heat dissipation effect is enhanced
due to the largely increased contact area of the fin structure. As a
result, it enhances the cooling rates and reduces the response time.
The structure also makes the finger look similar to a human’s.
Both the thickness and interval space between semicircle ribs are
2 mm, ensuring not only adequate contact area for heat dissipation
but also adaptability when grasping objects of different shapes.
Eventually, a complete integrated soft humanoid finger with
embedded sensor and actuators is produced after the demold pro-
cess. This fabrication process is robust, inexpensive, and requires
no assembly.
4 Experimental Testings
In this section, we evaluate the performance of the hand proto-
type with experimental tests.
4.1 Bending and Recovery. The first experiment is to test if
the output bending moment of the SMA actuator is strong enough
to overcome the resistance force and actuate the finger to a fully
Fig. 8 (a) The soft robotic finger body with various compli-
ance. (b) The fabricated fully integrated soft robotic finger.
MAY 2015, Vol. 7 / 021007-5
 Fig. 9 The bending process of the fully integrated soft robotic finger with an input current of 0.7 A at 7 V
actuated bending angle for grasping. More specifically, we are
interested in the relationship between the bending curvature ver-
sus actuation time. Figure 9 shows the bending process with the
0.7 A current at 7 V input voltage. The finger starts from a slight
bend at room temperature and ends at the fully actuated curvature
at t ¼ 28 s. From this test, we conclude that a current of I ¼ 0.7 A
is sufficient for full actuation.
When the current is too small, the finger can never be actuated
to the full extent. To find the relationship between the finger cur-
vature versus the actuation current, a series of experiments are car-
ried out. The radius of curvature q versus current I is plotted as the
dots in Fig. 10. From this figure, we conclude that when I < 0.3 A,
the finger could not be actuated at all. When 0.3 A < I < 0.6 A, the
final radius of curvature decreases quickly as the current I
increases. However when I > 0.6 A, the actuation force is satu-
rated, i.e., the final radius of curvature remains unchanged.
The response time is defined as the time required to reach the
saturated bending curvature under a specific current. The response
time to the full actuation t (s) versus the actuation current I (A) is
plotted in Fig. 11. As mentioned earlier, when I < 0.3 A, the finger
could not be actuated. Given I ¼ 0.3 A, it takes 203 s for the finger
Fig. 10 The final radius of curvature q (mm) versus current I (A)
021007-6 / Vol. 7, MAY 2015
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to reach a stable position. As expected, the larger current, the less
response time. However, when the current reaches 1 A, the
response time cannot be further decreased significantly due to
limit of heating efficiency. We are currently working on improv-
ing the heating efficiency to further reduce the response time.
We also tested the shape recovery rate of the finger. Figure 12
shows the comparison of the shape recovery process with and with-
out an opposing recovery SMA actuator. The spontaneous recovery
(without the activating the recovery actuator) process is plotted as
the red line, while the blue line represents the recovery process
with the recovery actuator. As we can see, without the recovery
SMA, it takes as long as t ¼ 140 s to reach a stable position. How-
ever, it never returns to the original straight position. With the
recovery SMA actuator, the finger returns to the nearly straight
position at t ¼ 80 s. Although the shape recovery time is increased
from 140 s to 80 s with the help of the recovery SMA strip, the
recovery speed is still low and needs to be significantly improved.
4.2 Shape Control by Flexure Sensor Feedback. To con-
duct a precise control experiment, the performance of the flexure
Fig. 11 The response time to the full actuation t (s) versus the
current I (A)
Transactions of the ASME
 Fig. 12 Comparison of the shape recovery process: without
the recovery SMA actuator (circle) and with the recovery actua-
tor (diamond)
sensor in terms of bending magnitude is tested. The flexure sensor
has two sides with different sensitivity, and one side is attached
with resistance material while another side is smooth. We defined
the direction of bending toward smooth surface of the flexure sen-
sor is “forward bending” and the opposite direction is “backward
bending”. The relations between the radius and resistance in both
directions are as shown in Fig. 13. As we can see in this figure,
the forward bending is more sensitive than backward bending. In
this study, the forward bending direction of the flexure sensor is
selected as the bending direction of the finger, while backward
bending direction of the flexure sensor is chosen as extension of
the finger.
Exponential equations were selected to fit the curve for both
forward and backward bending. After fitting curves of the flexure
sensor are obtained, precise shape control of the finger is studied.
In this test, Arduino UNO R3 is used as the microcontroller.
Given a desired position with a specific radius, the desired resist-
ance of the flexure sensor can be calculated by the fitting equation.
On the other hand, the actual resistance of the flexure sensor can
be detected in real time. Then, the derivation of the actual resist-
ance and the desired resistance is calculated and served as the sig-
nal for control. When the derivation is large, a constant current of
1 A is applied on the Ni-Cr wire. When the actual shape is close to
the desired shape, a proportional-differential (PD) control strategy
Fig. 13 Relation of resistance versus radius of the flexure sen-
sor for forward and backward bending
Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics
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Fig. 14 PD control of the finger position with flexure sensor
feedback
is applied to adjust the duty ratio of the pulse-width modulation
(PWM) wave.
Figure 14 shows an example of accurate control with a com-
manded shape radius of 40 mm. As we can see in this figure, the
finger is actuated at a slowly rate in the beginning followed by a
relative high speed. When it is close to the desired shape, the input
current switched to PD controller mode. It took 11 s for the finger
to reach the desired position. Then, it gradually reaches to a
dynamic equilibrium position. It took 16 s for the finger to reach
a small dynamic error (0.1%). Quicker actuation is possible if
a high current is applied on the Ni-Cr wire in the beginning which
will increase the temperature rapidly. However, it is limited by
the melting temperature of coating material 150  C for our
design. To further reduce the response time, coating material with
a high working temperature is needed.
4.3 Grasping Test for the Soft Robotic Hand. In this sec-
tion, the grasping ability of the soft robotic hand is tested. We
demonstrate that the hand is dexterous and compliant enough to
grasp the objects, as shown in Fig. 15. In these tests, five fingers
are connected in parallel in circuit. Technically, 3 A is required
for fully actuating the soft robotic hand with 0.6 A for each finger.
We test a variety of objects to grasp. Four of them are a plastic
cup, a football, a light bulb, and an apple, shown in Fig. 15. The
plastic cup and bottle of water are compliant and deformable. Tra-
ditional grasping tools might not easily grasp and hold these tar-
gets firmly without deforming them. The bulb and egg are brittle
objects that might easily be crushed by traditional graspers. How-
ever, the soft robotic hand is able to overcome these problems eas-
ily. This experiment demonstrates the advantages that the soft
robotic hand offers. Also, the soft robotic hand is robust and able
to withstand impacts and unintended contacts without damage and
is capable of grasping targets in an unstructured environment with
positioning errors.
4.4 Specifications and Comparisons. These specifications of
the robotic finger are described as the following. The finger has a
length of 100 mm and a diameter of 15 mm, which is comparable
to human fingers. The mass of the finger is 16 g. The minimum
bending radius of curvature of the finger is 15 mm. The whole
hand with five fingers and a palm has a length of 250 mm, a width
of 85 mm, and weights 282 g. A preliminary experiment showed
that one finger can lift a weight of 412 g (25 times of its own
weight) with a power of 4.9 W. Since the actuator of the finger is
MAY 2015, Vol. 7 / 021007-7

Fig. 15 Grasping experiment of the assembled robot hand
a bending actuator, a more sophisticated and accurate testing setup
will be used in the future to measure the output bending moment.
Compared with other SMA actuated soft robotic fingers, the
mass of a finger in Ref. [31] is 91 g, and the finger weighs 36.3 g
in Ref. [32], while the finger fabricated in Ref. [33] is 105 g. Most
of the compliant robot hands referred in the introduction have a
maximum lifting force of less than 5 N. The prosthetic hand of
Ref. [19] has a lifting weight of 500 g, but many SMA springs are
cooperatively used for each finger. The maximum lifting weight
of the hand in Ref. [22] is up to 1750 g, but at the cost of 300 W
power. The reason why SMA strip has greater output force than
SMA wire is that the cross-sectional area of the SMA strip is
much larger than SMA wire. Due to its larger cross-sectional area,
larger current (more than 10 A current for an SMA strip with
length of 80 mm in this paper) is needed to actuate it. Therefore,
the large current requirement limits the development of SMA
strip’s application to robotic applications. However, in this paper,
the Ni-Cr wire is selected as an indirect heating method, and only
0.7 A is required for fully actuating the soft robot finger, which
makes the SMA strip actuators for general usage possible.
5 Conclusions and Future Work
The design and fabrication process of an integrated soft robotic
hand is presented in this paper. The finger design features actuators
made of SMA strips for actuation and shape recovery, flexure sensor
for shape feedback, a Ni-Cr resistance wire for thermal stimulus of
SMA actuators. The fabrication process takes advantage of several
emerging RP technologies including soft material making, molding,
laser cutting, and 3D printing. All components including actuators,
sensors, and wires are embedded into a single body without any
assembly. The result is a light weight, robust, low cost, and fully
021007-8 / Vol. 7, MAY 2015
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integrated robotic hand that outputs a large grasping force with a
low input power. Experiments have been carried out to test the
response time and precise control. The testing results show that the
designed robotic finger has a weight of 16 g and is capable of lifting
up 412 g weight. This truly demonstrates the benefits of SMA actua-
tors. The response time is about 11 s at 1 A current input. We have
also tested the robotic hand by grasping objects with various
weights and shape. Future work will focus on reducing response
time by improving thermal efficiency and enhancing heat
dissipation.
Acknowledgment
The authors acknowledge Dr. Marcelo Dapino at The Ohio
State University for using an oven in training SMA actuator.
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