A Flexible Lightweight 7.4 V Input 300 V to 1500 V Output Power Converter for an Untethered Modular Piezoelectric Soft Robot

Soft robot is an enabling technology for many emerging applications. The operation voltages of many electric soft actuators, i.e., Macro Fiber Composites (MFC) and Dielectric Elastomer Actuators (DEA), are usually in the range of hundreds to thousands of volts. Actuators in a soft robot often need to be coordinated efficiently, precisely or rapidly, to perform useful functions such as crawling, jumping, or swimming. This paper presents the design and implementation of a flexible, lightweight, and modular power converter for multi-actuator piezoelectric soft robots. Output pulses of 300 V to 1500 V, 1 W, can be generated from 7.4 V input voltage with less than 5g of power electronics weight. A fully untethered, modular, scalable soft robot platform enables new opportunities for hardware, software, power, and control co-design.