A McKibben muscle arm learning equilibrium postures

Abstract

In designing artificial systems for studying motor control in humans and other organisms a key point to consider is the complexity reached by brain and body in their developmental stages. An artificial system whose brain and body complexity is shaped according to developmental stages might allow understanding weather, for example, newborn infants, infants, and adults use different neural mechanisms to cope with the same motor control problems. This article proposes an artificial system which aims at becoming a tool to study this type of problems. The system has a brain and body endowed with a set of minimal bio-mimetic features: (a) neural maps activated by receptive fields; (b) connections plasticity changed by Hebbian rule; (c) robotic arm actuated by a McKibben muscle. The arm autonomously learns to reach specific positions in space under the effect of gravity and for different load conditions. The results suggest that a fast and incremental goalaction mapping formation could constitute the computational mechanism underlying the neural growth and plasticity of an early developed brain at the onset of reaching. The same mechanism also allows a first approximate solution for load compensation avoiding the use of more sophisticated internal models (developed in further brain and body developmental stages). This paper aims to be a preliminary study on the feasibility of this approach.

The effect of geometry and material properties on the performance of a small hydraulic McKibben muscle system

“…Firstly, the need for assisting human movement in cases of injury or disability [3] and secondly, for specific applications necessitating a human-like softness, such as miniaturized soft tools for small surgeries [4] and soft arms for operating in cooperation with human people [5,6]. The first stage in creation and development of an artificial muscle system is to recognize the principal engineering properties of biological muscles such as force generation, response time, actuation strain and tension intensity that need to be mimicked [2,7].…”

Design and Simulation of a PAM Based Bionic Elbow Joint

“…In 2012，Paolo Tommasino designed a bionic arm which was actuated by a PAM mimicking the action of biceps [6]. The arm has one DOF corresponding to the elbow joint.…”

Thermally activated paraffin-filled McKibben muscles

“…Making and developing high-performance artificial muscles (Madden, 2006; Mirfakhrai et al, 2007) is an on-going challenge for engineers and scientists (Sangian et al, 2015; Spinks, 2012). Artificial muscles are of interest for assisting human movement in cases of injury/disability or for use in robotics and medical devices (Gordon et al, 2006; Tarnita et al, 2009; Tommasino et al, 2012; Villegas et al, 2012). Artificial muscles normally offer three different types of actuation movements: torsional (Foroughi et al, 2011), tensile (Hunter and Lafontaine, 1992) and bending (Wang et al, 1999).…”

“…Artificial muscles are of interest for assisting human movement in cases of injury/disability or for use in robotics and medical devices (Gordon et al, 2006;Tarnita et al, 2009;Villegas et al, 2012;Tommasino et al, 2012). Artificial muscles normally offer three different types of actuation movements: torsional (Foroughi et al, 2011), tensile (Hunter and Lafontaine, 1992) and bending (Wang et al, 1999).…”