Sensorized pneumatic muscle for force and stiffness control

摘要

This paper presents the design and experimental validation of a soft pneumatic artificial muscle with position and force sensing capabilities. Conductive liquid-based soft sensors are embedded in a fiber-reinforced contractile actuator to measure two modes of deformation - axial strain and diametral expansion - which, together, are used to determine the stroke length and contractile force generated under internal pressure. We validate the proposed device by using data from the embedded sensors to estimate the force output of the actuator at fixed lengths and the stiffness and force output of a one degree-of-freedom hinge joint driven by an antagonist pair of the sensorized pneumatic muscles.