サルコメア様収縮ユニットで構成された人工横紋筋の生体模倣設計
Bio-Inspired Design of Artificial Striated Muscles Composed of Sarcomere-Like Contraction Units (preprint)
骨格筋の横紋構造を模倣し、伸縮素材と非伸縮素材を組み合わせた空気圧式人工筋を設計。幾何パラメータと直列ユニット数の調整で特性を変えられ、入力圧力と出力力の関係を数式モデル化し実験で検証した。
著者: Luiza Labazanova, Zeyu Wu, Zhengping Gu, David Navarro-Alarcon
分類: cs.RO
原文アブストラクト
Biological muscles have always attracted robotics researchers due to their efficient capabilities in compliance, force generation, and mechanical work. Many groups are working on the development of artificial muscles, however, state-of-the-art methods still fall short in performance when compared with their biological counterpart. Muscles with high force output are mostly rigid, whereas traditional soft actuators take much space and are limited in strength and producing displacement. In this work, we aim to find a reasonable trade-off between these features by mimicking the striated structure of skeletal muscles. For that, we designed an artificial pneumatic myofibril composed of multiple contraction units that combine stretchable and inextensible materials. Varying the geometric parameters and the number of units in series provides flexible adjustment of the desired muscle operation. We derived a mathematical model that predicts the relationship between the input pneumatic pressure and the generated output force. A detailed experimental study is conducted to validate the performance of the proposed bio-inspired muscle.
