Integrated capacitance sensing for miniature artificial muscle actuators

Julie Legrand; Bart  Loenders; Alexander  Vos; Laurent  Schoevaerdts; Emmanuel Vander Poorten

doi:10.1109/JSEN.2019.2946268

Integrated capacitance sensing for miniature artificial muscle actuators

Julie Legrand
, Bart Loenders
, Alexander Vos
, Laurent Schoevaerdts
, Emmanuel Vander Poorten

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The use of McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles in surgical instruments is increasing due to their light weight, miniaturization potential, compliance and large actuation force. However, precise position and force control is still challenging due to the intrinsic muscle hysteresis. The present work proposes an easy-to-make integrated capacitance sensor for miniature artificial muscles by replacing two strands of the muscle braid with two conductive wires. By measuring the capacitance at high excitation frequency between both wires, the length of the muscle can be deduced. This new integrated sensor still allows the miniaturization of McKibben muscles. The miniature muscle with integrated capacitance sensing only loses 3% of its contraction length with regard to an original McKibben muscle. The sensor can predict the muscle length with a 0.31mm precision over 80% of the muscle total achievable contraction range in average.

Original language	English
Article number	8862955
Pages (from-to)	1363-1372
Number of pages	10
Journal	IEEE Sensors Journal
Volume	20
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2019.2946268
Publication status	Published - 1 Feb 2020
Externally published	Yes

Funding

Manuscript received September 18, 2019; accepted October 6, 2019. Date of publication October 8, 2019; date of current version January 17, 2020. This work was supported by a grant from the Belgian FWO (SB/1S98418N). The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was Prof. Tarikul Islam. (Corresponding author: Julie Legrand.) J. Legrand, B. Loenders, A. Vos, and E. Vander Poorten are with the Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology, KU Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium (e-mail: [email protected]).

Keywords

McKibben actuator
capacitance
intelligent structures
robot sensing systems

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10.1109/JSEN.2019.2946268

Cite this

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abstract = "The use of McKibben pneumatic artificial muscles in surgical instruments is increasing due to their light weight, miniaturization potential, compliance and large actuation force. However, precise position and force control is still challenging due to the intrinsic muscle hysteresis. The present work proposes an easy-to-make integrated capacitance sensor for miniature artificial muscles by replacing two strands of the muscle braid with two conductive wires. By measuring the capacitance at high excitation frequency between both wires, the length of the muscle can be deduced. This new integrated sensor still allows the miniaturization of McKibben muscles. The miniature muscle with integrated capacitance sensing only loses 3\% of its contraction length with regard to an original McKibben muscle. The sensor can predict the muscle length with a 0.31mm precision over 80\% of the muscle total achievable contraction range in average.",

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Integrated capacitance sensing for miniature artificial muscle actuators

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