TY - GEN
T1 - Characterizing architectures of soft pneumatic actuators for a cable-driven shoulder exoskeleton
AU - Thompson, Nicholas
AU - Sinha, Ayush
AU - Krishnan, Girish
N1 - *Research supported by the Center for Compact & Efficient Fluid Power. 1N. Thompson and A. Sinha, are with the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. [email protected] 2G. Krishnan is with the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - Low weight and innate compliance make soft pneumatic actuators an attractive method for actuating wearable robots. Performance of soft pneumatic actuators can be tailored to an application by combining them in novel architectures. We modeled and constructed nested linear and pennate architectures using fiber-reinforced elastomeric enclosures (FREEs) with identical manufacturing parameters and total effective lengths to compare their suitability for a cable-driven exoskeleton for augmenting shoulder flexion. We determined actuator performance requirements using a static model for the transmission of actuator forces to the upper arm via Bowden cables. We experimentally characterized the architectures by measuring their force-displacement curves at a range of pressures, yielding greater force and displacement from the nested architecture in the domain required by our exoskeleton. Results also indicated a force threshold above which the pennate structure produced greater force at any given displacement. We validated the nested linear architecture using a prototype exoskeleton installed on a passive mannequin. Measured joint angles at varying pressures were close to predicted values, adjusted for measured losses due to cable anchor movement.
AB - Low weight and innate compliance make soft pneumatic actuators an attractive method for actuating wearable robots. Performance of soft pneumatic actuators can be tailored to an application by combining them in novel architectures. We modeled and constructed nested linear and pennate architectures using fiber-reinforced elastomeric enclosures (FREEs) with identical manufacturing parameters and total effective lengths to compare their suitability for a cable-driven exoskeleton for augmenting shoulder flexion. We determined actuator performance requirements using a static model for the transmission of actuator forces to the upper arm via Bowden cables. We experimentally characterized the architectures by measuring their force-displacement curves at a range of pressures, yielding greater force and displacement from the nested architecture in the domain required by our exoskeleton. Results also indicated a force threshold above which the pennate structure produced greater force at any given displacement. We validated the nested linear architecture using a prototype exoskeleton installed on a passive mannequin. Measured joint angles at varying pressures were close to predicted values, adjusted for measured losses due to cable anchor movement.
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U2 - 10.1109/ICRA.2019.8793707
DO - 10.1109/ICRA.2019.8793707
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85071514141
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
SP - 570
EP - 576
BT - 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2019
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2019 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2019
Y2 - 20 May 2019 through 24 May 2019
ER -