Sensor-Integrated TPU Soft Actuators Fabricated by Foam Additive Manufacturing

<h3>Dataset description</h3>

<p>
This Dataverse record accompanies the manuscript
<strong>“Sensor-Integrated TPU Soft Actuators Fabricated by Foam Additive Manufacturing”</strong>
(Detry, Di Maio, Tammaro, Squillace) and provides the tracking videos, processed outputs, and MATLAB
code used to extract and visualize finger/phalanx motion trajectories during actuation tests.
</p>

<p>
The paper introduces a manufacturing route to fabricate <em>sensor-integrated</em> soft actuators directly from
carbon-black-filled thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) using <strong>Foam Additive Manufacturing (FAM)</strong>.
In FAM, CO<sub>2</sub> is physically solubilized in the filament and released during extrusion, generating a
homogeneous microcellular morphology that simultaneously reduces density (up to <strong>42.2%</strong>) and
stabilizes the electromechanical (piezoresistive) response under deformation.
</p>

<p>
To support the device-level evaluation, this dataset contains the motion-tracking material used in the
<strong>finger assembly testing</strong> section:
cropped and annotated videos with tracked points, MATLAB <code>.mat</code> files storing ROI/cropping parameters
and trajectories, and publication-ready trajectory overlays exported as <code>.eps</code>.
The scripts allow full reproduction of the workflow from a raw video to the final trajectories figure.
</p>

<h4>What is included</h4>
<ul>
<li><strong>Processed tracking videos</strong> (<code>.avi</code>) showing the ROI and tracked point trajectories.</li>
<li><strong>Trajectory data</strong> (<code>.mat</code>) including crop parameters (<code>x, y, width, height</code>), initial points, and tracked trajectories across frames.</li>
<li><strong>Trajectory figures</strong> (<code>_trajectories.eps</code>) for publication-quality visualization.</li>
<li><strong>MATLAB code</strong> (<code>CropVideo.m</code>, <code>track4P.m</code>, <code>TrajectoryPlot.m</code>) required to reproduce the tracking pipeline.</li>
</ul>

<h4>Reproducibility notes</h4>
<ul>
<li>Point selection (4 points) and ROI selection are interactive and therefore user-dependent.</li>
<li>To process a new video: run <code>CropVideo.m</code> → <code>track4P.m</code> → <code>TrajectoryPlot.m</code>.</li>
<li>Run names encode specimen/test identifiers and conditions (e.g., <em>Catch</em>, <em>NoCatch</em>, <em>Release_Cut</em>, <em>V2</em>).</li>
</ul>

<h4>Recommended citation</h4>
<p>
Please cite the associated manuscript and this Dataverse dataset (use the DOI assigned by Dataverse once published).
</p>

<p>
<strong>Keywords:</strong> Foam Additive Manufacturing; conductive TPU; soft actuators; piezoresistive sensing; soft robotics; motion tracking; MATLAB
</p>