繊維状形状記憶ポリマーを複合した空気圧ラバーアクチュエータの試作

抄録

Pneumatic rubber actuators configured with a rubber tube and some fibers working as a reinforcement material have advantages of flexible, low cost and so on. Generally their driving behavior is decided by the arrangement of the fibers. In this paper, we propose a novel structure concept of pneumatic rubber actuators. The actuators consist of the rubber tube and shape-memory polymer (SMP) fibers. SMP fibers have two functions, reinforcing the tube and shape fixity of initial state. We applied SMP fibers to two kinds of pneumatic actuators, a straight fiber type and a McKibben type. Owing to the shape fixity of the SMP fibers the initial shape of prototype actuators can be changed arbitrarily. By changing the initial shapes, torsional motion of the straight fiber type and bending motion of the McKibben type were realized.