Printable programmable viscoelastic materials for robots

Impact protection and vibration isolation are an important component of the mobile robot designer's toolkit; however, current damping materials are available only in bulk or molded form, requiring manual fabrication steps and restricting material property control. In this paper we demonstrate a new method for 3D printing viscoelastic materials with specified material properties. This method allows arbitrary net-shape material geometries to be rapidly fabricated and enables continuously varying material properties throughout the finished part. This new ability allows robot designers to tailor the properties of viscoelastic damping materials in order to reduce impact forces and isolate vibrations. We present a case study for using this material to create jumping robots with programmed levels of bouncing.

Authors

• Robert MacCurdy
• Jeffrey I. Lipton
• Shuguang Li 0005
• Daniela Rus

Keywords

• Liquids
• Mathematical model
• Robots
• Vibrations
• Damping
• Material properties
• Printing Materials
• Viscoelastic Material
• Programmable Materials
• 3D Printing
• Impact Force
• Robot Design
• Vibration Isolation
• Material Damping
• Mechanical Properties
• Power-law
• Spring Constant
• Transfer Function
• Form Of Equation
• Soft Materials
• Storage Modulus
• Additive Manufacturing
• Viscoelastic Properties
• Material Response
• Peak Force
• Soft Robots
• Peak Acceleration
• Stopping Distance
• Dynamic Mechanical Analysis
• Vibration Damping
• Complex Modulus
• Mass Position
• Power-law Exponent