Position control of an experimental robotic arm driven by artificial muscles based on shape memory alloys
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Position control of an experimental robotic arm driven by artificial muscles based on shape memory alloys Cedric Cocaud Æ Aaron Price Æ Amor Jnifene Æ Hani Naguib
Received: 29 November 2006 / Accepted: 21 March 2007 / Published online: 23 May 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007
Abstract This paper presents a study on the potential application of artificial muscles based on shape memory alloys as linear robotic actuators. An extended discussion on various control techniques and ways of biologically inspired muscle arrangements is presented. A two DOF experimental robotic arm was built and used to test the performance of the proposed artificial muscle configurations, and a biologically inspired control strategy using a rulebase concept was developed and tested using the two DOF experimental robotic arm.
Keywords Shape memory alloys Artificial muscles Rule-based control Robotic arm
C. Cocaud A. Price Mechanical Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada A. Jnifene (&) Mechanical Engineering, Royal Military College of Canada, Station Forces, PO Box 17000, Kingston, ON, CanadaK7K 7B4 e-mail: [email protected] H. Naguib Mechanical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
1 Introduction A considerable portion of the population relies on prosthetic devices to overcome the difficulties associated with the loss of a limb through congenital defects, trauma, or disease. It has been reported that 200–500 major amputations are performed per million people each year (Dormandy et al. 2004). Modern actuated prostheses are commonly powered by electric servomotors. While achieving reasonable kinematic performance, they are typically heavy and bulky (Pfeiffer et al. 1999). Because of these limitations, most users tend to substitute these types of prosthesis by older (but lighter) manually activated prostheses. A recent survey on patient’s satisfaction with prosthetic devices indicated that 22.9% were dissatisfied with the weight of their prosthetic limb (Pezzin 2004). Thus, there is a clear need for practical prosthetic devices that combine both, automatic actuation and light weight structure. In an attempt to solve this problem, several alternative lightweight actuators used as artificial muscles (AMs) have been investigated. These AMs include electroactive polymers (EAP) and pneumatic muscles (Bar-Cohen et al. 1998; Chou and Hannaford 1996). The actuation force generated by EAP based artificial muscles is too low to be of any practical use at the present state of development. Pneumatic muscles require a bulky set of pneumatic system to supply and control the flow of compressed gas needed to allow these muscles to produce useful work. A vast
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amount of research has been reported on the application of shape memory alloy (SMA) as artificial muscles in both straight tensile (Pfeiffer et al. 1999; Makaran et al. 1993; De Laurentis and Mavroidis 2002; Gorbet and Russell 1995) and hybrid composite (Barrett and Gross 1996; Icardi 2001) configurations with promising results. The
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