Operation of a pneumatic soft manipulator using a wearable interface with flexible strain sensors This paper presents a soft manipulator which mimics the muscle structure of an octopus arm and its operation by the masterslave method by using a wearable interface. The soft manipulator consists of a rubber structure and McKibben artificial muscles arranged in axial and oblique directions. This manipulator has high safety and shape adaptability and realizes smooth and continuous movement like the octopus arm such as bending and twisting. For the intuitive operation of the manipulator, the wearable interface using flexible strain sensors is developed. It is easy to wear on the human arm with high comfortability because it consists only of soft materials and stretches easily with following the arm motion. We can operate the soft manipulator by using the motions of the wrist and forearm as an operation input. The soft manipulator can move following the arm motion of the operator, and it shows the high possibility to conduct actual tasks.

Design and Fabrication of Long SoftRobotic Elastomeric Actuator Inspired by Octopus Arm The biomimetic soft robotic actuators can provide stable flexible multipoint contact to safely grip delicate objects. A lot of soft robotic actuators have been fabricated using silica gel materials through molding methods. However, owing to the difficulty of the demolding process, existing soft robotic arms are often designed to be short. To fabricate a long soft robotic arm, this paper proposes a novel design approach for fabricating the long soft robotic arm (1000 mm) inspired by the octopus arm that is a fiberreinforced pneumatic elastomeric actuator. First, we develop a set of molds of the long soft robotic elastomeric actuator. To easily achieve the demolding of the soft actuator chamber, we design the three core petals around the mandrels in the molds. Furthermore, there are also two halfsegment mandrels. The two halfsegment mandrels are respectively removed from both ends of the mold when demolding. Then, we manufacture the long soft robotic arm using the molds by the combination silica gel and nonextensible materials. We also perform the experiments to verify the feasibility of the long soft robotic elastomeric actuator. The experimental results show the proposed design method for fabricating the long soft robotic arm is feasible.