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Abstract Soft actuators with pneumatic network have innovative potential applications in medical and rehabilitation areas. The performance of this kind of actuators is determined by the design of chambers and the properties of the active extensible layer and the passive inextensible layer. In this article, actuator with isosceles trapezoidal chambers is proposed. Orthogonal experiment design and finite element method are used to optimize the structure of actuators. Results indicate that adding constrain-limiting paper in the passive layer can significantly reduce the bending radius. Position of the paper in the passive layer also affects the bending radius. Actuators with trapezoidal chambers can have a smaller bending radius compared with that with rectangle chambers. The bending radius decreases as the ratio of short base to long base of trapezoid decreases. Increasing the number density of chambers can further reduce the bending radius.

Significant growth of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has unlocked many services and applications opportunities in the healthcare sector. Aerial transportation of medical cargo delivery can be an effective and alternative way to ground-based transport systems in times of emergency. To improve the security and the trust of such aerial transportation systems, Blockchain can be used as a potential technology to manage, operate and monitor the entire process. In this paper, we present a blockchain network solution based on Ethereum for the transportation of medical cargo such as blood, medicines, vaccines, etc. The smart contract solution developed in solidity language was tested using the Truffle program. Ganache blockchain test network was employed to host the blockchain network and test the operation of the proposed blockchain model. The suitability of the model is validated in real-time using a UAV and all the flight data are captured and uploaded into the blockchain.