Experimental Modelling of Pneumatic Artificial Muscle Systems Designing of Prosthetic Robotic Arm

Abstract

Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PAMs) are widely used in humanoid and exoskeletons for force and mobility assistance due to its characteristic of working in agonistic-antagonistic way. PAM technology is currently under study and facing problems such as low efficiency and less actuation. At Robolab Technologies, PAMs are used in our exoskeleton system called Assistive Pneumatic Muscle Arm (APMA) and has countered such problems. This paper gives the pattern of change in actuation of PAM due to change in physical parameters. Effects of change in system pressure, external load, actuator length and components dimensions such as braided mesh tube dimensions and silicone tube dimensions of PAM are studied in detail using an experimental setup. The setup is designed to make the PAM systems efficient and to get the generalized parameters while designing PAM systems as per requirement. Hence this paper can be referred while designing the PAM system to decide physical parameters of the actuator for corresponding required payload and system pressure to optimize the system and increase its efficiency by 8% to 10% than normal PAM actuators.