- Chou CP, Hannaford B. Study of Human Forearm Posture Maintenance With a Physiologically Based Robotic Arm and Spinal Level Neural Controller, Biol Cybern. 76(4), 1997
- McKibben muscles have many properties in common with the human arm
- Feedback is provided by mechanical muscle spindles (see Marbot & Hannaford 1993) and force sensors which mimic Golgi tendon organ which are attached in parallel to the antagonistic muscle pair
- Ability to differentiate between Ia and Ib afferent feedback
- Muscles exhibit hysteresis
- Muscle attachment points are chosen to be biologically plausible
- There is a discussion of the limitations
- There is a discussion of why a mechanical model is superior to a computational model
- Arm is controlled by a biologically inspired neural network programmed into a real-time DSP
- Single DOF
- Responses of model arm are compared to observed values for a human arm
- Spinal cord mediated reflexs are modelled
- Hannaford B, Winters JM, Chou CP, Marbot PH. The Anthroform Biorobotic Arm: A System for the Study of Spinal Circuits, Ann Biomed Eng. 23(4), 1995
- This paper details the development of the Biorobotic arm used in subsequent UWashington experiments
- Interesting Introduction giving the motivation for Biorobotic research
- Bones are modeled on human bones, including size, weight, and density. Built out of fiberglass
- Elbow and shoulder joints were actual artificial joints donated by a medical device company
- Ligaments made from knit fabrics
- Fifteen McKibbens for all the muscles plus one 2×2 grid each for biceps and triceps
- McKibbens are custom built – authors claim they can be easily constructed in less than 20 minutes
- Equations are given for McKibben muscle response
- Controlled by network of artificial neurons communicating on a 1ms timescale. Spinal cord time delays of 1ms are created in software using buffering.
- Introduce the concept of artificial muscle spindles – I need to read up and see if there is anything more up-to-date.
- Marbot PH, Hannaford B. The mechanical spindle: a replica of the mammalian muscle spindle. IEEE Conf Eng Med Biol, 1993
- Chou CP, Hannaford B. Measurement and Modeling of Mckibben Pneumatic Artificial Muscles, IEEE Trans Robot Automat. 12(1), 1996
- I didn’t read this one – but it basically justifies that McKibben is a reasonable model of a variety of properties of human arm and arm muscle
- Klute GK, Czerniecki JM, Hannaford B. Artificial Muscles: Actuators for Biorobotic Systems, Int J Robot Res. 21(4), 2002
University of Illinois
- Hesselroth T, Sarkar K, Vandersmagt PP, Schulten K. Neural-Network Control of a Pneumantic Robot Arm, IEEE Trans Syst Man Cybern. 24(1), 1994
- Good description of the mechanics of constructing the McKibbens
- 90 PSI compressed air source
- compressed air dryer
- 12 gallon buffer tank (to even out fluctuations)
- regulator to reduce to 75 PSI – arm draws a max of 60 PSI, so there is some leeway built in
- Servo Drive Units take RS-232 commands and convert into current sources – one for each of the joint’s two actuators
- Servo Valve Units take current and produce a proportional pressure in the McKibben tube
- Two cameras are mounted at 90 degree angles to provide visual feedback. They track a light at the arm’s tip
- Pair of parallel antagonistic muscles with free ends connected together by a chain that passes over a sprocket mounted at the joint
- Joints can be controlled in either Position Control Mode (PID/feedback to desired posn) or Pressure Control Mode (essentially open loop)
- van der Smagt P, Groen F, Schulten K. Analysis and Control of a Rubbertuator Arm, Biol Cybern.75(5), 1996
