湾曲型スマート人工筋肉用光ファイバセンサの特性改善

抄録

The McKibben artificial muscle is well known as a soft actuator. The McKibben artificial muscle generally contracts in the axial direction by applying air pressure, but it bends by strengthening a part of the side surface with a non-stretchable material and suppressing the contraction of that part.

In order to enhance the functionality of the bending type artificial muscle, in this research, we are developing a bending type smart artificial muscle that integrates a bending sensor by using a plastic optical fiber as a non-stretchable material placed on the side surface of the artificial muscle. When an optical fiber is curved, the amount of light propagating inside decreases, so it functions as a bending sensor. However, an optical fiber has a dead zone in which the amount of light hardly changes from a linear state to a certain amount of curvature.

In this report, the characteristics of the optical fiber sensor are improved by shaving the surface of the optical fiber partially.