Mathematical model of rubberless pneumatic artificial muscle

Abstract

This paper describes a mathematical model of a rubberless pneumatic artificial muscle. This artificial muscle has characteristics resembling those of a McKibben-type artificial muscle. Because of its exclusion of rubber material, however, the rubberless artificial muscle can be driven by low pressure. Although it uses a braided mesh similar to that of a McKibben artificial muscle, its contractive mechanism differs slightly. We derived a mathematical model of the rubberless artificial muscle while devoting attention to its unique contractive mechanisms. We confirmed the validity of the mathematical model through experimentation. Results show that this proposed mathematical model can be expressed in a simple form, and that it has sufficient accuracy.