Development of a composite twisted and coiled polymer actuator unit based on biological muscle and its automatic performance evaluation system

Abstract

In recent years, increase in demand for soft robots has prompted research into compact, lightweight, and flexible actuators. Twisted and coiled polymer actuator is low-cost and high-cyclicity, but the variation in performance due to manufacturing methods has been a problem. The author developed bidirectional twisted type fishing line artificial muscle manufacturing equipment, and succeeded in stabilizing the manufacturing method as previous study, but the performance of the manufactured artificial muscles was insufficient. In this study, the performance was improved by increasing the length of the artificial muscle and combining multiple artificial muscles, and investigated a drive method using feedback, and developed an experimental apparatus that automatically evaluates performance.