Development of a bending actuator using a rubber artificial muscle and its application to a robot hand

Recent years, with rapidly growing number of nuclear families, the homes which only have the married couple of senior citizen and elderly person of living alone are increasing. So the development of a human-friendly-robot which can take care of people's daily life is strongly desired. This robot has to do works just like human, so it is needed to have a dexterous soft hand in the robot. Therefore, we have developed an artificial soft hand in our laboratory. This robot hand which has five fingers is made of silicone rubber. We can use this hand to achieve several works just like human hand. For example, it can grasp some objects that have the different shape and stiffness. Since it is made of silicone rubber, there is little damage to the object. In this study, we develop and produce a new type actuator, using a McKibben artificial muscle and flexible tube that can be used as a finger of the soft robot hand. Then we investigate the characteristics of the new type actuator. Finally, in order to examine the effectiveness of the proposed actuator, a master-slave system using the new actuator is tested. Keywords: Robot hand, Rubber Artificial Muscle, Bending Actuator