Measuring Device Developed for Soft Materials and Deep-Sea Applications

This paper presents explanations of the development and preliminary experiments of a measuring device for examining the physical properties of soft materials, intended for deep-sea applications. In the field of robotics, soft materials have been used recently for robotic grippers to manipulate delicate and irregular-shaped objects. Soft grippers have also been developed for underwater exploration. One important benefit of soft materials is that they can interact with and manipulate various objects while deforming. However, those beneficial physical properties of soft materials might change with water pressure in the deep ocean. As described herein, we developed a small measuring device to investigate changes in the physical properties of soft materials under high water pressure. The final goal of our research is investigation of properties of flexible materials under water pressure of 10 MPa, equivalent to a water depth of 1000 m or more, we conducted preliminary experiments at 1.0 MPa as a first step in this research. Using the developed device, we measured the relation between the compressive displacement and elastic force of a soft material under pressure of 1.0 MPa.