Paper:
Development of High Contractile Pneumatic Artificial Rubber Muscle for Power Assist Device
Daisuke Sasaki, Toshiro Noritsugu, and Masahiro Takaiwa
Graduate School of Natural Science of Technology, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushimanaka, Kita-ku, Okayama 700-8530, Japan
The purpose of this study is to develop a pneumatic artificial rubber muscle that has a high contraction rate in order to realize the required performance for a power assist device. In addition, a bilateral type pneumatic wearable master-slave training device is developed as an application of this muscle. The developed rubber muscle is constructed with two nylon bands and an expansion unit, which is put between the nylon bands. The generated force from the expansion unit is converted to a contraction force by the nylon band. This rubber muscle can realize the high contraction rate. The high contractile rubber is used in the form of actuators in the developed knee device because of the above feature. In this paper, the structure and characteristics of the developed rubber muscle are described and then the structure of the developed master-slave device is described. Finally, the validity of the proposed device is evaluated from an experiment that assumes rehabilitation.
- [1] A. Chu, H. Kazerooni, and A. Zoss, “On the Biomimetic Design of the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX),” Proc. of the 2005 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 4356-4363, 2005.
- [2] Y. Mori, K. Takayama, T. Zengo, and T. Nakamura, “Development of Straight Style Transfer Equipment for Lower Limbs Disabled: Verification of Basic Motion,” J. of Robotics and Mechatronics, Vol.16, No.5, pp. 456-463, 2004.
- [3] J. Nikitczuk, B. Weinberg, and C. Mavroidis, “Rehabilitative Knee Orthosis Driven by Electro-Rheological Fluid Based Actuators,” Proc. of the 2005 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 2294-2300, 2005.
- [4] D. Sasaki, T. Noritsugu, and M. Takaiwa, “Development of Pneumatic Power Assist Sprint “ASSIST” Operated by Human Intention,” J. of Robotics and Mechatronics, Vol.17, No.5, pp. 568-574, 2005.
- [5] H. Kobayashi, T. Siiba, and Y. Ishida, “Realization of All 7Motions for the Upper Limb by a Muscle Suit,” J. of Robotics and Mechatronics, Vol.16, No.5, pp. 504-512, 2004.
- [6] B. Verrelst et al., “ Second generation pleated artificial muscle and its robotic applications,” Advanced Robotics, Vol.20, No.7, pp. 783-805, 2006.
- [7] A. Chu, H. Kazerooni, and A. Zoss, “On the Biomimetic Design of the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX),” Proc. of the 2005 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 4356-4363, 2005.
This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationa License.
Copyright© 2012 by Fuji Technology Press Ltd. and Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. All right reserved.