Robot finger using electro-conjugate fluid

An electro-conjugate fluid (ECF) is a kind of functional fluid, which produces a jet flow (ECF jet) when subjected to high DC voltage. It is known that a strong ECF jet is generated under a non-uniform electric field (e.g., a field with a pair of needle and ring electrodes (a needle-ring electrode pair)). This study introduces the ECF jet to develop a novel flexible robot finger. First, we propose a concept for a novel robot finger. The robot finger mainly consists of a bending actuator, an ECF tank and ECF jet generators, which could be a micro fluid pressure source of the robot finger. Second, we characterize each component of the robot finger (i.e., the bending actuator and the ECF jet generator). We investigate the influences of electrode parameters on ECF jet generator performance in order to design the finger prototype. Finally we clarify the characteristics of the robot finger. The length, the diameter and the mass of the robot finger are 34.2 mm, 12 mm and 3.8 g, respectively. The robot finger can generate a force of 0.28 N and bend approximately 70.