Development of a SMA-fishing-line-McKibben bending actuator

Chaoqun, X; Guo, J; Yang, C; Lina, H; Davis, ST

Abstract

High power-to-weight ratio soft artificial muscles are of overarching importance to enable inherently safer solutions to human-robot interactions. Traditional air driven soft McKibben artificial muscles are linear actuators. It is impossible for them to realize bending motions through a single McKibben muscle. Over two McKibben muscles should normally be used to achieve bending or rotational motions, leading to heavier and larger systems. In addition, air driven McKibben muscles are highly nonlinear in nature, making them difficult to be controlled precisely. A SMA(shape memory alloy)–fishing–line–McKibben (SFLM) bending actuator has been developed. This novel artificial actuator, made of a SMA-fishing-line muscle and a McKibben muscle, was able to produce the maximum output force of 3.0 N and the maximum bending angle (the rotation of the end face) of 61°. This may promote the application of individual McKibben muscles or SMA-fishing-line muscles alone. An output force control method for SFLM is proposed, and based on MATLAB/Simulink software the experiment platform is set up, the effectiveness of control system is verified through output force experiments. A three-fingered SFLM gripper driven by three SFLMs has been designed for a case study, which the maximum carrying capacity is 650.4 ± 0.2 g.

Citation

Chaoqun, X., Guo, J., Yang, C., Lina, H., & Davis, S. (2018). Development of a SMA-fishing-line-McKibben bending actuator. IEEE Access, 6, 27183-27189. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2830314

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 23, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Apr 27, 2018
• Publication Date: Apr 27, 2018
• Deposit Date: Apr 24, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: May 1, 2018
• Journal: IEEE Access
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Volume: 6
• Pages: 27183-27189
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2830314
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2830314
• Related Public URLs: http://ieeeaccess.ieee.org/
• Additional Information: Access Information : ©2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.