Proposal for Improving the Portability and Responsiveness of Pneumatic Artificial Muscles that uses Combustion of Dimethyl Ether

-Evaluation of the responsiveness of using combustion -

Abstract

Pneumatic drive systems are widely used in assistance devices and flexible drive robots owing to their characteristics of light weight, high output, and flexibility. However, those devices cannot perform instantaneous operation because those devices have low responsiveness. Then we focus on the physical properties of flammable dimethyl ether (DME), and we considered using combustion of DME to improve the responsiveness of pneumatic drive systems. We developed artificial muscle which is driven by burning DME inside the device. In this paper, we conducted the experiment to investigate the response time and displacement of artificial muscle when DME burned in the device.