School of Engineering, Kwansei Gakuin University, 1 Gakuenuegahara, Sanda 669-1330, Japan.
Faculty of Symbiotic Systems Sciences, Fukushima University, 1 Kanayagawa, Fukushima 960-1296, Japan.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Nov 19;22(22):8975. doi: 10.3390/s22228975.
Shortage of labor and increased work of young people are causing problems in terms of care and welfare of a growing proportion of elderly people. This is a looming social problem because people of advanced ages are increasing. Necessary in the fields of care and welfare, pneumatic artificial muscles in actuators of robots are being examined. Pneumatic artificial muscles have a high output per unit of weight, and they are soft, similarly to human muscles. However, in previous research of robots using pneumatic artificial muscles, rigid sensors were often installed at joints and other locations due to the robots' structures. Therefore, we developed a smart actuator that integrates a bending sensor that functions as a human muscle spindle; it can be externally attached to the pneumatic artificial muscle. This paper reports a smart artificial muscle actuator that can sense contraction, which can be applied to developed self-monitoring and robot posture control.
劳动力短缺和年轻人工作负担增加，导致越来越多的老年人在护理和福利方面出现问题。由于老年人数量的增加，这是一个迫在眉睫的社会问题。在护理和福利领域，人们正在研究气动人工肌肉在机器人执行器中的应用。气动人工肌肉的单位重量输出很高，而且它们像人类肌肉一样柔软。然而，在以前使用气动人工肌肉的机器人研究中，由于机器人的结构，通常在关节和其他位置安装刚性传感器。因此，我们开发了一种智能执行器，它集成了一个弯曲传感器，该传感器的功能类似于人类的肌梭，可以外部连接到气动人工肌肉上。本文报告了一种可以感知收缩的智能人工肌肉执行器，它可以应用于开发的自我监测和机器人姿势控制。
