Pneumatic artificial muscles

Pneumatic systems operate linearly like natural muscle pneumatic artificial muscles (McKibben artificial muscles) in particular are intrinsically compliant and can thus provide the give that natural muscle attains. Unfortunately, these systems require air compressors that are neither light nor small, and their response speed is limited by the ability to pump air into and out of the actuators. 

Pneumatic muscles have been used in many applications as robotic structures and exoskeletons are the most popular. The principle of pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) is simple when an enclosed volume increases, it shortens (Belforte et al., 2007). A limitation of this system is that PAMs can only generate pulling forces. To obtain bidirectional motion, it is necessary to use an antagonistic setup. A lot of PAM types have been investigated since the 1930s. In order to result in a unidirectional actuator, several approaches were followed pleated PAMs (Daerden and Lefeber, 2001), the Yarlott muscle (Yarlott and Mass, 1972), the Kukolj muscle (Kukolj, 1988) or the Paynter hyperboloid muscle (Paynter, 1988). Some pneumatic actuators allow production of bending. These flexible actuators are based on elastomeric elements divided into two or three sectors (Cataudella et al., 2001 Suzumori et al., 1991). 

Daerden, F., Lefeber, D., 2001. The concept and design of pleated pneumatic artificial muscles. Intemational Journal of Fluid Power 2 (3), 2001. 

Kanno, T., MorisaM, D., Miyazaki, R., Endo, G., Kawashima, K., 2015. A walking assistive device with intention detection using back-driven pneumatic artificial muscles. In 2015 IEEE International Conference on RehabiUtation Robotics (ICORR), pp. 565—570. 

The actuator is a McKibben pneumatic artificial muscle that is driven by low air pressure (max. 200 kPa). Since the McKibben pneumatic artificial muscle has the flexibility, this robot hand contributes to safety when contacting with a human in a human environment, especially the medical field. The structure of the robot hand, inspired by the musculoskeletal structure that uses several muscles to make a joint move, is a redundant structure. Thus, the design of a controller is difficult. In this study, the biological controller inspired by a biological fluctuation is designed for a middle finger of the robot hand as a control target. 

Chou, C.P. Haimaford, B. Static and dynamic characteristics of McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles. Proc. 1994 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics Automation, San.Diego, CA, USA, vol. 1 (1994), pp. 281-286... 

Nickel, V.L., Perry, J., Garrett, A.L. Development of useful function in the severely paralyzed hand. Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 45-A, 933-952 (1963) Chou, C., Hannaford, B. Measurement and modeling of McKibben pneumatic artificial muscle. IEEE Trans. Robot. Automat. 2, 90-102 (1996)... 

Operational Modal Analysis in Civil Engineering An Overview, Fig. 2 Some actuators that are employed for OMAX testing drop weight system (left), impact hammer (center), and pneumatic artificial muscle (right)... 

K. K. Ahn, and H.P.H. Anh, System modeling and identification of the two-link pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) manipulator optimized with genetic algorithm, Proceedings 2006 lEEE-ICASE Int. Conf, Busan, Korea, (2006), pp. 4744-4749. 

Klute, G. K., Czemiecki, J. M., and Hannaford, B. (1999). McKibbon artificial muscles pneumatic actuators with biomechanical intelligence. lEEEIASME Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, September 19th-22nd, Atlanta. 

The power assist glove from Okayama University, Japan, comprises six pneumatic mbber (possibly based on braided structures) muscles secured to an ordinary glove (Sasaki et al., 2004). The muscles achieve approximately 20 N, which is sufficient to interact with objects in daily life. Some studies show the possibihty to use PAM to design devices for walking assistance (Kanno et al., 2015) or low back support (Li et al., 2013). Of course, it is possible to propose an entire wearable device like the Muscle Suit from Tokyo University (Kobalob). The main interest in this is that this muscle suit is wearable and does not consist of a metal frame with artificial muscles. The suit is only attached to the body with a belt and Velcro. 

Sasaki, D., Noritsugu, T., Takaiwa, M., Yamamoto, H., 2004. Wearable power assist device for hand grasping using pneumatic artificial rubber muscle. In Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication. 

GESEWOLITZ I am also going to defend Dr. Janicki s use of the terms elastance and resistance. I think that it is very useful to talk about the ventricle as a compliance or capacitance. The pressure-volume relation of the heart is related to the muscle properties in, of couse, a complex way. The models of the cardiovascular system in terms of representing the heart as a time varying elastance have been very successful. As someone who has worked with artificial hearts. I m intrigued by the fact that the pneumatic artificial heart is a pressure source, and the motor-driven artificial heart is a flow source while the natural heart is a time-varying elastance. 

Hannaford, B., Klute, G., Czerniecki, J.M. Artificial muscles actuators for biorobotic systems. International Journal of Robotics Research 21, 295-309 (2002) Caldwell, D.G., Medrano-Cerda, G.A., Goodwin, M. Control of pneumatic muscle actuators. IEEE Control Systems 15, 40-48 (1995)... 

Another actuating principle is used by the artificial muscle approach. Popular in robotics are pneumatically operated muscles of the McKibben type (Zhang and Philen 2011). They consist of a tube-like shell of interwoven fibers. The basic operation principle is that a lateral expansion of this membrane yields an axial contraction caused by the woven structure (Bar-Cohen 2002). 

Ferris DP, Czerniecki JM, and Hannaford B, An ankle-foot orthosis powered by artificial pneumatic muscles. Journal of Applied Biomechanics, vol. 21 2, pp. 189-197,2005. 

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