Development of new actuator using artificial muscle

The robot in the future will be lightened and, in addition, the complex tasks will be done by consumption of less energy. To achieve this, the development, of artificial muscle actuator as soft as human-being becomes indispensable. At present, artificial muscle actuator used is Mckinbben type(1,2), but heat and mechanical loss of this actuator are large because of the friction caused by the expansion and contraction of the sleeve. Therefore, we developed the artificial muscle tube where the Kevlar fiber of the high intensity had been built into the silicon tube. Our actuator is long-lived because it does not need the sleeve, and can give the aeolotropic characteristic of actuator by how to knit the fiber built into the tube.