Development of Robot Using Pneumatic Artificial Rubber Muscles to Operate Construction Machinery

Abstract

After disasters, remote control of construction machinery is often required to ensure the safety of workers during excavation. However, only limited numbers of remote-controlled construction machinery exist, and they are typically larger than conventional machinery. After a disaster, the transportation of such machinery takes additional time and is often troublesome. Therefore, it would be desirable to develop a remote-control system that could easily be installed on ordinary construction machinery. A pneumatic humanoid robot arm is in the process of being developed. While considering the portability issue, a lightweight fiber knitted pneumatic artificial rubber muscle (PARM) was selected as the actuator for the arm. This arm can be installed on all construction machinery models, can be controlled remotely, and has been designed for easy installation and portability. In this research, construction machinery was retrofitted with a pneumatic robot that enables it to be operated remotely. This robot has 6 degrees of freedom and utilizes the fiber knitted PARM. Experiments were conducted to measure the static characteristics of the new PARM and to measure their performance in the remote control of construction machinery. Experimental results showed that the developed system is able to achieve handling two levers of machinery, one that controls back and forward movement and the other that controls the bucket. Experimental results showed that the developed system successfully operated construction machinery remotely.

A Survey on applications of Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

“…A rubber PAM-actuated Robot Arm System ( Figure 5.2) with six degrees of freedom has been developed in [64] and a two-DOF planar robotic manipulator ( Figure 5.3) that assisted in handling of heavy loads and was actuated by Pleated Pneumatic Artificial Muscles, has been appeared in [65], [66]. In [67], the authors propose a prototype design of a teleoperational rig for retrieval of radioactive material that uses a combination of the traditional man-handled manipulation pole combined with PAMs.…”

A method to suppress temperature increase in pneumatic artificial rubber muscles

“…A wide variety of applications can benefit from the features of pneumatic systems [1]. The pneumatic artificial rubber muscle (PARM) is a flexible actuator, which, when pressurized, decreases in actuating length [2,3]. PARMs consist primarily of rubber tubes wrapped in a double helix synthetic fiber netting at a predetermined angle [4][5][6].…”

Propulsion System With Pneumatic Artificial Muscles for Powering Ankle-Foot Orthosis

“…Several forms of this type of muscle have actually been commercialized by different companies such as Bridgestone Co. [5], the Shadow Robot Company [6], Merlin Systems Coorporation [7] and Festo [8]. The interest in these actuators is growing increasingly and several groups all over the world use McKibben muscles in various robotic and medical applications [9][10][11][12].…”