5 accepted papers
This letter presents a lockable upper-limb exoskeleton to reduce the physical fatigue of laborers/surgeons operating with upper limbs maintaining fixed posture for long time. A novel structure design integrating the jamming and engagement mechanisms that can provide locking of flexion and adduction
The adoption of variable stiffness actuators allows robots to take advantages of both rigid and soft structures. Jamming based variable stiffness structures are receiving increased attentions due to advantages of light weight, easy fabrication, and so on. However, the maximum bending stiffness and s
In wearable applications, traditional pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) cannot fully satisfy the requirements of safe and sufficient interaction with the human body. The requirements include high contraction ratio, self-contained sensing, reconfiguration, locking abilities, and avoidance of the sq
In industrial production, current pipe-climbing robots can replace humans in real-time monitoring, leak inspection, and other tasks. However, most pipe-climbing robots are designed for specific applications with complex structures; this limits the adaptability to various conditions. To solve this is
This study proposes a novel artificial muscle based on a pouch-type actuator with a contraction ratio amplification mechanism (CRAM). The CRAM places the final length of the pouch-type actuator into a secondary direction, while the main direction is used only for contraction purpose. Thus, the contr