Development and Application of High Contractile Pneumatic Artificial Muscle

The purpose of this study is to develop a pneumatic artificial muscle with a high contractile rate to realize a required performance in a power assist device. The developed muscle is constructed with two nylon bands and an expansion unit. The generated force from the expansion unit is converted to a contraction force by the nylon band. This artificial muscle can be realized the high contractile rate. In this paper, the structure and the characteristics of the developed muscle are described, and then the application of this artificial muscle is discussed.