Biomimetic Actuators ―The Need for and use of Soft' Actuators

摘要

Traditional robot design has been concerned primarily with the development of structures and mechanisms that have high accuracy and speed but at the expense of high mass and power requirements and limited human interaction. Recent advances in computational power however have allowed lightweight and highly flexible structures, similar to those found in biological creations, to be used in robot design. This has led to the development of bio-mimetics were the trend is to try to emulate the 'soft' compliant structure of muscle, bone, tendons and skin and combine this with the power, robustness, accuracy, and endurance of mechanical drives. This paper will study the use of pneumatic Muscle Actuators (pMAs) as a soft actuators that can macroscopically replicate much of the action of natural muscle. The actuators will be tested in antagonistic pairs and used to show an application of a robot primate (dimensionally comparable with a female gorilla) with a mass of less than 25kg constructed using light flexible, materials. The paper will draw conclusions based on this work and suggest a path for future development.