Advanced Materials for Soft Robotics Assisted Non-Destructive Inspection

AFRL/RX develops materials, processes, and advanced manufacturing technologies for aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, rockets, and ground-based systems and their structural, electronic and optical components. Many applications of these advanced materials are on critical infrastructure or products that require nondestructive evaluation/inspection (NDE/NDI), especially on parts in extreme operating environments where NDE/NDI is done through autonomous, robotic methods. Air Force product centers, logistic centers, and operating commands rely on the directorate's expertise in materials, nondestructive inspection, systems support, and advanced manufacturing methods to solve system, expeditionary deployment, and operational challenges. Electroninks is the world leader in providing particle-free conductive inks, which provide 10x higher conductivity relative to conventional conductive inks - reducing the amount of space, weight, and required precious metals in electronics resulting in significant cost savings and design improvements. These inks are pure metallic films with no binders (unlike competitors’ inks), resulting in plated-metal properties, excellent ink stability, high printing yield, and film reliability at low cost. Electroninks currently has a range of standardized commercial inks and offers semi-custom composition for individual customer needs that are available on the commercial market today. The main goals for this Sequential Phase II /TACFI proposal are:Electroninks will develop new conductive materials platforms specific to soft materials that are utilized in soft robotics, where conventional metallization is typically not possible; Enabling next generation needs for inspection tools capable of withstanding extreme environments (temperature, space) and conditions (high degrees of freedom, excess stress/strain conditions) identified by AFRL’s Materials and Manufacturing DirectorateElectroninks will develop standard operating procedures and ink deposition processes (inkjet/digital printing, soft lithography) that better meet manufacturing requirements of AFRL/RX. This includes handing off a complete tooling system (manufacturing system) that can either be housed at AFRL, or an appropriate 3rd party, that is designed to handle, print, cure and process parts with these metal complex inks into various circuitries and sensors that are compatible with soft, elastomeric substrates Electroninks will develop all-in-one 3D circuit sticker modules/sensors for use in soft body robots. This would be actual full-product prototypes with the metalized circuits and sensors directly on the soft materials that could withstand various actuation modes: expansion, compression, 180° bendsElectroninks will provide materials toolbox for NDI/NDE for future manufacturing platforms, either as a fundamental materials set (metal complex inks + compatible soft, elastomeric substrates + manufacturing suggestions) and/or printed, sensor, sticker modules