Design of a bio-inspired pneumatic artificial muscle with self-contained sensing

Erin, Önder; Pol, Nishant; Valle, Luis; Park, Yong‐Lae

doi:10.1109/embc.2016.7591146

Cited by 28 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This actuator is flexible, lightweight and has high force-weight ratio [8]. In addition, the flexibility of both the fibers and the bladder makes it fully compliant [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A piezoresistive flexible sensor to detect soft actuator deformation

Maselli

Zrinscak

Magliola

et al. 2019

2019 2nd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft)

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A textile-based strain sensor for measuring the length of a McKibben pneumatic actuator has been developed. McKibben actuators are flexible, lightweight, and widely used in all those applications where compliance and safety are required, e.g. soft robotics and power assisting device. The actuator length needs to be measured to control the device accurately. However, properties such as flexibility and lightness might be lost if rigid sensors such as potentiometers or linear encoders are directly attached to the actuators. For this reason, flexible and stretchable sensors are necessary. In this study, a flexible sensor using conductive textile is proposed to actively measure the length of manufactured McKibben actuators. Firstly, the electro-mechanical characteristics of the proposed sensor were obtained and a model to compensate its nonlinearities was evaluated. Secondly, an estimation of the accuracy was performed during dynamic actuator contractions. The results showed that, using this sensor, a direct measurement of the actuator axial displacement can be obtained within 20% error, without affecting its performances in terms of contraction.

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“…This actuator is flexible, lightweight and has high force-weight ratio [8]. In addition, the flexibility of both the fibers and the bladder makes it fully compliant [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A piezoresistive flexible sensor to detect soft actuator deformation

Maselli

Zrinscak

Magliola

et al. 2019

2019 2nd IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft)

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“…In this case, a simple linear function is found that associates the changes in muscle length with those ones of the measured inductance. A similar solution was described in [34], where the external gauze was modified to include an inductive coil surrounding the muscle fibers: the length of the muscle is achieved by measuring the corresponding coil inductance change.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Characterization of a Mckibben Pneumatic Muscle Prototype with an Embedded Capacitive Length Transducer

et al. 2022

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The McKibben muscle types are pneumatic actuators known to be intrinsically safe for their high power-to-weight ratio. For these reasons, they are suitable for robotic, biomechanical, and medical applications. In these application fields and, above all, in collaborative robotics, where safety must be ensured for human–robot interactions, the values of pressure, force, and length are necessary and must be continuously monitored and controlled. Force and pressure transducers are commercially available to be integrated into a McKibben muscle type. On the contrary, no commercial-length transducers can be adopted. This work presents a novel McKibben muscle prototype with an embedded capacitive-length transducer. The latter is a cylindrical capacitor made of a telescopic system composed of two tubes: one of its ends is connected to the muscle. A change in the length of the muscle causes a proportional change in the transducer capacitance. The paper reports in detail on the working principle of McKibben’s muscle, its fabrication, characterization, and validation of four prototype capacitive transducers. The results achieved from the experimental activities demonstrate that it is possible to control the variations of the muscle length relative to its elongation and compression for values less than 1 mm. This is the consequence of the ability to measure the transducer capacitance with a typical statistical relative indetermination better than 0.25%, which is a figure of merit for the reliability and mechanical and electrical stability of the proposed McKibben muscle prototype. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the transducer capacitance as a function of the muscle length is linear, with maximum deviations from linearity equal to 2.44% and 5.22% during the muscle elongation and compression, respectively.

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“…Some prototypes were designed with a sensor placed outside the McKibben muscle. For example, a coil wrapped around the muscle fibers establishes a link between the coil inductance and the muscle contraction [12]. Kuriyama et al and Yamamoto et al placed respectively a flexible ring [13] or film [14] made out of an electro-conductive rubber around a muscle.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated Capacitance Sensing for Miniature Artificial Muscle Actuators

et al. 2020

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The use of McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles in surgical instruments is increasing due to their light weight, miniaturization potential, compliance and large actuation force. However, precise position and force control is still challenging due to the intrinsic muscle hysteresis. The present work proposes an easy-to-make integrated capacitance sensor for miniature artificial muscles by replacing two strands of the muscle braid with two conductive wires. By measuring the capacitance at high excitation frequency between both wires, the length of the muscle can be deduced. This new integrated sensor still allows the miniaturization of McKibben muscles. The miniature muscle with integrated capacitance sensing only loses 3% of its contraction length with regard to an original McKibben muscle. The sensor can predict the muscle length with a 0.31mm precision over 80% of the muscle total achievable contraction range in average.

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Design of a bio-inspired pneumatic artificial muscle with self-contained sensing

Cited by 28 publications

References 13 publications

A piezoresistive flexible sensor to detect soft actuator deformation

A piezoresistive flexible sensor to detect soft actuator deformation

Design and Characterization of a Mckibben Pneumatic Muscle Prototype with an Embedded Capacitive Length Transducer

Integrated Capacitance Sensing for Miniature Artificial Muscle Actuators

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