Development of High Contractile Pneumatic Artificial Rubber Muscle for Power Assist Device

Abstract

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.