Modelling In Modelica Of A Pneumatic Muscle: Application To Model An Experimental Set-Up

Abstract

The characteristics of pneumatic artificial muscles- or McKibben muscles- make them very interesting for the development of robotic applications that feature low impedance in terms of their interaction with the environment, such as can be the case with orthoses or certain wearable robots. In order to research the applicability of these actuators in industrial applications, an experimental one-degree-of-freedom set-up based on pneumatic muscles manufactured by Festo has been built at Ikerlan. This paper presents the modelling of a pneumatic muscle in Modelica as a new component. After that, the paper describes the set-up constructed and shows the complete model in Dymola/Modelica, in addition to validation of the model with some experimental data.