MODEL IMPROVEMENT AND EXPERIMENT VALIDATION OF PNEUMATIC ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES

According to the deficiency of the present model of pneumatic artificialmuscles (PAM), a serial model is built up based on the PAM's essential working principle with theelastic theory, it is validated by the quasi-static and dynamic experiment results, which are gainedfrom two experiment systems. The experiment results and the simulation results illustrate that theserial model has made a great success compared with Chou's model, which can describe the forcecharacteristics of PAM more precisely. A compensation item considering the braid's elasticity andthe coulomb damp is attached to the serial model based on the analysis of the experiment results.The dynamic experiment proves that the viscous damp of the PAM could be ignored in order to simplifythe model of PAM. Finally, an improved serial model of PAM is obtained.

FORCE FEEDBACK DATAGLOVE BASED ON PNEUMATIC ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES

An exoskeleton force feedback dataglove is developed, which uses the pneumatic artificial muscles as actuators. On the basis of the simplified hand model, the motion equation is deduced according to the theory of Denavit-Hartenberg. The model of the equivalent contact forces exerted by the object on the finger is proposed. By the principle of virtual work, the static equilibrium of finger is established. The force Jacobian matrix of finger is calculated, and then the joint torques of the finger when grasping objects are obtained. The theory and structure of the force feedback datagolve are introduced. Based on the theory of motion stabilization of four-bar linkage, the flexion angles of joints are measured. The torques on finger joints caused by the output forces of pneumatic artificial muscles are calculated. The output forces of pneumatic artificial muscle, whose values are controlled by its inner pressure, can be calculated by the joint torques of the finger when grasping objects. The arms of force, driving torques and the needed output forces of pneumatic muscle are calculated for each joint of the index finger. The criterion of output force of pneumatic muscle is given.

Active Force with Fuzzy Logic Control of a Two-Link Arm Driven by Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

In this paper, the practicality and feasibility of Active Force Control （AFC） integrated with Fuzzy Logic（AFCAFL） applied to a two link planar arm actuated by a pair of Pneumatic Artificial Muscle （PAM） is investigated. The study emphasizes on the application and control of PAM actuators which may be considered as the new generation of actuators comprising fluidic muscle that has high-tension force, high power to weight ratio and high strength in spite of its drawbacks in the form of high nonlinearity behaviour, high hysteresis and time varying parameters. Fuzzy Logic （FL） is used as a technique to estimate the best value of the inertia matrix of robot arm essential for the AFC mechanism that is complemented with a conventional Propor- tional-Integral-Derivative （PID） control at the outermost loop. A simulation study was first performed followed by an experi- mental investigation for validation. The experimental study was based on the independent joint tracking control and coordinated motion control of the arm in Cartesian or task space. In the former, the PAM actuated arm is commanded to track the prescribed trajectories due to harmonic excitations at the joints for a given frequency, whereas for the latter, two sets of trajectories with different loadings were considered. A practical rig utilizing a Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulation （HILS） configuration was developed and a number of experiments were carried out. The results of the experiment and the simulation works were in good agreement, which verified the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed AFCAFL scheme actuated by PAM.

High‑Performance Fasciated Yarn Artificial Muscles Prepared by Hierarchical Structuring and Sheath-Core Coupling for Versatile Textile Actuators

High-performance yarn artificial muscles are highly desirable as miniature actuators,sensors,energy harvesters,and soft robotics.However,achieving a yarn artificial muscle that covers all the properties of excellent actuation performance,mechanical robustness,structural stability,and high scalability by a low-cost strategy is still a great challenge.Herein,a bio-inspired fasciated yarn structure is first reported for creating robust high-performance yarn artificial muscles.Unlike conventional strategies that leverage costly materials or complex processing,the developed yarn artificial muscles are constructed by hierarchically helical and sheath-core assembly design of cost-effective common fibers,such as viscose and polyester.The hierarchically helical sheath structure pushes the theoretical limit of the inserted twist in yarns and endows the yarn muscles with large stroke(5815°cm^(-1))and high work capacity(23.5 J kg^(-1)).Due to the rapid water transfer and efficient energy conversion of inter-sheath-core coupling,the as-prepared yarn muscles possess fast response,high rotation accelerated speed,and low recovery hysteresis.Moreover,the inactive core yarn serves as support for internal tethering and load-bearing,enabling these yarn muscles to maintain a self-stable structure,robust life cycle and mechanics.We show that the yarn muscle fabricated in this method is readily available and highly scalable for achieving high-dimensional actuation deformations,which considerably broadens the application scenarios of artificial muscles.

Dual-Ion Co-Regulation System Enabling High-Performance Electrochemical Artificial Yarn Muscles with Energy-Free Catch States

Artificial yarn muscles show great potential in applications requiring low-energy consumption while maintaining high performance. However, conventional designs have been limited by weak ion-yarn muscle interactions and inefficient “rocking-chair” ion migration. To address these limitations, we present an electrochemical artificial yarn muscle design driven by a dual-ion co-regulation system. By utilizing two reaction channels, this system shortens ion migration pathways, leading to faster and more efficient actuation. During the charging/discharging process, PF_6~- ions react with carbon nanotube yarn, while Li~+ ions react with an Al foil. The intercalation reaction between PF_6~- and collapsed carbon nanotubes allows the yarn muscle to achieve an energy-free high-tension catch state. The dual-ion coordinated yarn muscles exhibit superior contractile stroke, maximum contractile rate, and maximum power densities, exceeding those of “rocking-chair” type ion migration yarn muscles. The dual-ion co-regulation system enhances the ion migration rate during actuation, resulting in improved performance. Moreover, the yarn muscles can withstand high levels of isometric stress, displaying a stress of 61 times that of skeletal muscles and 8 times that of “rocking-chair” type yarn muscles at higher frequencies. This technology holds significant potential for various applications, including prosthetics and robotics.

Review on ultra-lightweight flapping-wing nano air vehicles:Artificial muscles,flight control mechanism,and biomimetic wings

Flying insects are capable of flapping their wings to provide the required power and control forces for flight.A coordinated organizational system including muscles,wings,and control architecture plays a significant role,which provides the sources of inspiration for designing flapping-wing vehicles.In recent years,due to the development of micro-and meso-scale manufacturing technologies,advances in components technologies have directly led to a progress of smaller Flapping-Wing Nano Air Vehicles(FWNAVs)around gram and sub-gram scales,and these air vehicles have gradually acquired insect-like locomotive strategies and capabilities.This paper will present a selective review of components technologies for ultra-lightweight flapping-wing nano air vehicles under 3 g,which covers the novel propulsion methods such as artificial muscles,flight control mechanisms,and the design paradigms of the insect-inspired wings,with a special focus on the development of the driving technologies based on artificial muscles and the progress of the biomimetic wings.The challenges involved in constructing such small flapping-wing air vehicles and recommendations for several possible future directions in terms of component technology enhancements and overall vehicle performance are also discussed in this paper.This review will provide the essential guidelines and the insights for designing a flapping-wing nano air vehicle with higher performance.

Development of Bio-cultured Artificial Muscles with High Design Flexibility

Recent advances in bionics have made it possible to create various tissue and organs.Using this cell culture technology,engineers have developed a robot driven by three-dimensional cultured muscle cells(bioactuator)—a muscle cell robot.For more applications,researchers have been developed various tissues and organs with bio3D printer.However,three-dimensional cultured muscle cells printed by bio3D printer have been not used for muscle cell robot yet.The aim of our study is to develop easy fabrication method of bioactuator having high design flexibility like as bio3D printer.We fabricated three-dimensional cultured muscle cells using mold and dish having pin which can contribute to shape and cell alignment.In this study,we observed that our method maintained the shape of three-dimensional cultured muscle cells and caused cell alignment which is important for bioactuator development.We named three-dimensional cultured muscle cells developed in this study“bio-cultured artificial muscle(BiCAM)”.Finally,we observed that BiCAM contracted in response to electrical stimulus.From these data,we concluded our proposed method is easy fabrication method of bioactuator having high design flexibility.

Cold-induced shape memory hydrogels for strong and programmable artificial muscles

Thermo-responsive shape memory hydrogels generally achieve shape fixation at low temperatures,and shape recovery at high temperatures.However,these hydrogels usually suffer from poor mechanical properties.Herein,we present a unique poly(acrylic acid)/calcium acetate shape memory hydrogel with cold-induced shape recovery performances as ultrastrong artificial muscles.Since the acetate groups could form aggregate at high temperatures and thus induce the association of the hydrogel network,the hydrogel can be fixed into a temporary shape upon heating and recover to its original shape in a cold environment.Moreover,a programmable shape recovery process is realized by adjusting the shape fixing time.In addition,the unique shape memory process enables the application demonstration as bio-inspired artificial muscles with an ultrahigh work density of45.2 kJ m^(-3),higher than that of biological muscles(~8 kJ m^(-3)).

Fluid-driven artificialmuscles: bio-design, manufacturing, sensing, control, and applications

Developing artificial muscles that can replace biological muscles to accomplish various tasks iswhat we have long been aiming for.Recent advances in flexible materials and 3D printing technology greatly promote the development of artificial muscle technology.A variety of flexible material-based artificial muscles that are driven by different external stimuli,including pressure,voltage,light,magnetism,temperature,etc.,have been developed.Among these,fluid-driven artificial muscles(FAMs),which can convert the power of fluid(gas or liquid)into the force output and displacement of flexible materials,are the most widely used actuation methods for industrial robots,medical instruments,and human-assisted devices due to their simplicity,excellent safety,large actuation force,high energy efficiency,and low cost.Herein,the bio-design,manufacturing,sensing,control,and applications of FAMs are introduced,including conventional pneumatic/hydraulic artificial muscles and several innovative artificial muscles driven by functional fluids.What’s more,the challenges and future directions of FAMs are discussed.

High‑Temperature‑Tolerant Artificial Muscles Using Poly(p‑phenylene benzobisoxazole)Composite Yarns

Today the developed yarn muscles or actuators still cannot satisfy the requirements of working in high-temperature environ-ments.Thermal resistivity is highly needed in aerospace and industrial protection applications.Herein,an artificial muscle with high-temperature tolerance is prepared using carbon nanotube(CNT)wrapped poly(p-phenylene benzobisoxazole)(PBO)composite yarns.A thermal twisting method was utilized to reorientate the stiff PBO molecular chains into a uniform and twist-stable coiled structure.The CNT/PBO composite yarn muscle generates reversible contractile strokes up to 18.9%under 5.4 MPa tension and outputs 1.3 kJ kg^(-1) energy density.In contrast to previous actuators,which are normally oper-ated at room temperatures,the CNT/PBO composite yarn muscles can work at ambient temperatures up to 300℃ with high contractile stroke and long-term stability.A bionic inchworm robot,a deployable structure,and smart textiles driven by the high-temperature-tolerant yarn muscles were demonstrated,showing the promise as a soft actuator towards high-temperature environment applications.

Adaptive Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model and model predictive control of pneumatic artificial muscles

Pneumatic artificial muscles(PAMs)usually exhibit strong hysteresis nonlinearity and time-varying features that bring PAMs modeling and control difficulties.To characterize the hysteresis relation between PAMs’displacement and fluid pressure,a long short term memory(LSTM)neural network model and an adaptive Takagi-Sugeno(T-S)fuzzy model are proposed.Experiments show that both models perform well under the load free conditions,and the adaptive T-S Fuzzy model can furtherly adapt to the change of load with the online adaptation ability.With the concise expression and satisfactory performance of the adaptive T-S Fuzzy model,a model predictive controller is designed and tested.Experiments show that the model predictive controller has a good performance on tracking the given references.

Design and modeling of a novel soft parallel robot driven by endoskeleton pneumatic artificial muscles

Owing to their inherent great flexibility, good compliance, excellent adaptability, and safe interactivity, soft robots have shown great application potential. The advantages of light weight, high efficiency, non-polluting characteristic, and environmental adaptability provide pneumatic soft robots an important position in the field of soft robots. In this paper, a soft robot with 10 soft modules, comprising three uniformly distributed endoskeleton pneumatic artificial muscles, was developed. The robot can achieve flexible motion in 3D space. A novel kinematic modeling method for variable-curvature soft robots based on the minimum energy method was investigated, which can accurately and efficiently analyze forward and inverse kinematics. Experiments show that the robot can be controlled to move to the desired position based on the proposed model. The prototype and modeling method can provide a new perspective for soft robot design, modeling, and control.

A method for the length-pressure hysteresis modeling of pneumatic artificial muscles

This paper presents a method for the length-pressure hysteresis modeling of pneumatic artificial muscles(PAMs)by using a modified generalized Prandtl-Ishlinskii(GPI)model.Different from the approaches for establishing the GPI models by replacing the linear envelope functions of operators with hyperbolic tangent and exponential envelop functions,the proposed model is derived by modifying the envelope functions of operators into arc tangent functions,which shows an improvement in the modeling accuracy.The effectiveness of the proposed model is verified by the experimental data of a PAM.Furthermore,its capacity in capturing the hysteresis relationship between length and pressure is testified by giving different input pressure signals.With regard to the computational efficiency,the influence of the number of operators on the modeling accuracy is discussed.Furthermore,the inversion of the GPI model is derived.Its capability of compensating the hysteresis nonlinearities is confirmed via the simulation and experimental study.

Bio-inspired robotic manta ray powered by ionic polymer-metal composite artificial muscles

The manta ray(Manta birostris)is the largest species of rays that demonstrates excellent swimming capabilities via large-amplitude flapping of its pectoral fins.In this article,we present a bio-inspired robotic manta ray using ionic polymer–metal composite(IPMC)as artificial muscles to mimic the swimming behavior of the manta ray.The robot utilizes two artificial pectoral fins to generate undulatory flapping motions,which produce thrust for the robot.Each pectoral fin consists of an IPMC muscle in the leading edge and a passive polydimethylsiloxane membrane in the trailing edge.When the IPMC is actuated,the passive polydimethylsiloxane membrane follows the bending of the leading edge with a phase delay,which leads to an undulatory flapping motion on the fin.Characterization of the pectoral fin has shown that the fin can generate flapping motions with up to 100%tip deflection and 40◦twist angle.To test the free-swimming performance of the robot,a light and compact on-board control unit with a lithium ion polymer battery has been developed.The experimental results have shown that the robot can swim at 0.067 BL/s with portable power consumption of under 2.5 W.

Design,Characterization and Optimization of Multi-directional Bending Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

Bending Pneumatic Artificial Muscles(PAMs)are particularly attractive and extensively applied to the soft grasper,snake-like robot,etc.To extend the application of PAMs,we fabricate a Multi-directional Bending Pneumatic Artificial Muscle(MBPAM)that can bend in eight directions by changing the pressurized chambers.The maximum bending angle and output force are 151°and 0.643 N under the pressure of 100 kPa,respectively.Additionally,the Finite Element Model(FEM)is established to further investigate the performance.The experimental and numerical results demonstrate the nonlinear relationship between the pressure and the bending angle and output force.Moreover,the effects of parameters on the performance are studied with the validated FEM.The results reveal that the amplitude of waves and the thickness of the base layer can be optimized.Thus,multi-objective optimization is performed to improve the bending performance of the MBPAM.The optimization results indicate that the output force can be increased by 7.8%with the identical bending angle of the initial design,while the bending angle can be improved by 8.6%with the same output force.Finally,the grasp tests demonstrate the grip capability of the soft four-finger gripper and display the application prospect of the MBPAM in soft robots.

Artificial muscles driven by the cooperative actuation of electrochemical molecular machines.Persistent discrepancies and challenges

Here we review the persisting conceptual discrepancies between different research groups working on artificial muscles based on conducting polymers and other electroactive material.The basic question is if they can be treated as traditional electro-mechanical(physical)actuators driven by electric fields and described by some adaptation of their physical models or if,replicating natural muscles,they are electro-chemo-mechanical actuators driven by electrochemical reaction of the constitutive molecular machines:the polymeric chains.In that case the charge consumed by the reaction will control the volume variation of the muscular material and the motor displacement,following the basic and single Faraday’s laws:the charge consumed by the reaction determines the number of exchanged ions and solvent,the film volume variation to lodge/expel them and the amplitude of the movement.Deviations from the linear relationships are due to the osmotic exchange of solvent and to the presence of parallel reactions from the electrolyte,which originate creeping effects.Challenges and limitations are underlined.

Experimental Research of Force Feedback Dataglove Based on Pneumatic Artificial Muscle

Force feedback dataglove is an important interface of human-machine interaction between manipulator and virtual assembly system, which is in charge of the bidirectional transmission of movement and force information between computer and operator. The exoskeleton force feedback dataglove is designed taking the pneumatic artificial muscle as actuator, meanwhile, its structure and work principle are introduced, and the force control problem is analyzed and researched by experiment. The mathematic model of grasping rigid object for finger is established. Considering the friction of tendon-sheath system and finger deformation, the closed-loop force control for a single joint, a single finger and multi-fingers are studied respectively by the feedforward proportional-integral（PI） control method with variable arguments. On the premise of the force smoothness, the control error of the force exerted on the finger joint is in the range of ±0.25 N, which meets the requirement of force feedback. By experimental analysis, the reason of force fluctuation is that the finger joint has a small amplitude quiver, and the consistent change tendency of the force between proximal interphalangeal（PIP） joint and distal interphalangeal（DIP） joint results from their angle coupling relationship.

Design and test of pneumatic artificial muscle driven variable trailing-edge camber wing

A variable camber wing driven by pneumatic artificial muscles is developed in this paper. Firstly, the experimental setup to measure the static output force of pneumatic artificial muscle is designed and the relationship between the static output force and the air pressure is investigated. Experimental results show that the static output force of pneumatic artificial muscle decreases nonlinearly with the increase of contraction ratio. Secondly, the model of variable camber wing driven by pneumatic artificial muscles is manufactured to validate the variable camber concept. Finally, wind tunnel tests are conducted in the low speed wind tunnel. It is found that the wing camber increases with the increase of air pressure. When the air pressure of PAMs is 0.4 MPa and 0.5 MPa, the tip displacement of the trailing-edge is 3 mm and 5 mm, respectively. The lift of aerofoil with flexible trailing-edge increases by 87% at AOA of 5°.

NONLINEAR MODELING AND CONTROLLING OF ARTIFICIAL MUSCLE SYSTEM USING NEURAL NETWORKS

The pneumatic artificial muscles are widely used in the fields of medicalrobots, etc. Neural networks are applied to modeling and controlling of artificial muscle system. Asingle-joint artificial muscle test system is designed. The recursive prediction error (RPE)algorithm which yields faster convergence than back propagation (BP) algorithm is applied to trainthe neural networks. The realization of RPE algorithm is given. The difference of modeling ofartificial muscles using neural networks with different input nodes and different hidden layer nodesis discussed. On this basis the nonlinear control scheme using neural networks for artificialmuscle system has been introduced. The experimental results show that the nonlinear control schemeyields faster response and higher control accuracy than the traditional linear control scheme.

Research on the Dynamic Performance of Polyacrylonitrile Muscles

The dynamic property of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) muscles was tested. The test results can help us to master PAN muscles' mechanical and chemical behaviors, which are indispensable for us to build dynamic model for the artificial muscle. Furthermore, here we provide an important experimental way to study gel muscles.