Modeling and system integration for a thin pneumatic rubber 3-DOF actuator

Recently, soft actuators have been getting increased attention within various fields. The actuators are composed of flexible materials and driven by pneumatic pressure. A thin pneumatic rubber actuator generating 3 degrees of freedom motion, called 3-DOF micro-hand, has small diameter McKibben artificial muscles which generate a contraction force in the axial direction. By this structure, the micro-hand contracts in the longitudinal direction and bends in any direction by changing the applied air pressure pattern to the artificial muscles. The input-output relation of the micro-hand, however, is complicated and has not been modeled. In this paper, modeling for 3-DOF micro-hand is proposed. Moreover, the experimental system is built for the micro-hand and the proposed model is evaluated by using the experimental results.