Deformable Pneumatic Actuators Heads: Shinichi Hirai Contact: Miwako Usui Date: 1998 - 2004 Mailing address: Dept. Robotics, Ritsumeikan Univ. Kusatsu, Shiga 525-8577, Japan Supported by: JSPS Research for Figure Program: Arimoto-Kawamura, Tabata, Konishi, and Hirai Labs. Associated lab/group: Kawamura Lab. Kawamura Lab. (Dept. Textile Eng., Shinshu Univ.)

Project Description

We will develop deformable pneumatic actuators. Embedding linear constraints on an elastic rubber tube yields a single-motion actuator (SMA). We will then construct a pneumatic group actuator (PGA) composed of multiple SMA's.

Embedding linear constraints on an elastic rubber tube yields a single-motion actuator (SMA). Individual SMA's can perform a single-motion including bend, extension, shrinkage, and translation. We will then construct a pneumatic group actuator (PGA) composed of multiple SMA's. PGA's have the following properties:

• multiple motions can be performed by controlling air pressure imposed on individual SMA's
• easy to prototype since PGA's are consisting of tubes and plates
• various properties can be realized by changing individual SMA's

Pneumatic Group Actuator (PGA)	Bend motion of PGA

Personnel

	Name	Title	Degree
	Miwako Usui	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Kiyoto Shimizu	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Tomohiro Masui	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Hiroki Tanigawa	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Masaki Morimoto	Graduated
	Takuma Miyake	Graduated
	Hirotaka Tanaka	Graduated

Publications

• Osamu Tabata, Satoshi Konishi, Pierre Cusin, Yuichi Ito, Fumie Kawai, Shinichi Hirai, and Sadao Kawamura, Micro fabricated tunable bending stiffness devices, Sensors and Actuators A: Physical, Vol.89, Issues 1-2, pp.119-123, 10.1016/S0924-4247(00)00538-0, Mar., 2001

• Shinichi Hirai, Kiyoto Shimizu, and Sadao Kawamura, Vision-based Motion Control of Pneumatic Group Actuators, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Vol.3, pp.2842-2847, 10.1109/ROBOT.2002.1013663, Washington D.C., U.S.A., May 11-15, 2002
• Shinichi Hirai, Tomohiro Masui, and Sadao Kawamura, Prototyping Pneumatic Group Actuators Composed of Multiple Single-motion Elastic Tubes, Proc. IEEE Int.Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Vol.4, pp.3807-3812, 10.1109/ROBOT.2001.933211, Seoul, Korea, May 21-26, 2001
• Osamu Tabata, Satoshi Konishi, Pierre Cusin, Yuichi Ito, Fumie Kawai, Shinichi Hirai, and Sadao Kawamura, Microfabricated Tunable Bending Stiffness Device, Proc. IEEE 13th Annual Int. Conf. on Micro ElectroMechinical Systems, pp.23-27, 10.1109/MEMSYS.2000.838484, Miyazaki, Japan, Jan. 23-27, 2000
• Shinichi Hirai, Pierre Cusin, Hiroki Tanigawa, Tomohiro Masui, Satoshi Konishi, and Sadao Kawamura, Qualitative Synthesis of Deformable Cylindrical Actuators through Constraint Topology, Proc. IEEE/RSJ Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vol.1, pp.197-202, 10.1109/IROS.2000.894604, Takamatsu, Japan, Oct. 31 - Nov. 5, 2000

• Shinichi Hirai and Sadao Kawamura, Pneumatic Active/Passive Devices for Wearable Robots, US/Japan Workshop on Exoskeleton Technologies, Maui, U.S.A., 2001
• Shinichi Hirai, Design of Soft Actuators and Material for Human-Supporting Robots, EU-Japan Symposium on Human Friendly Robotics, 1999

Notes

Album	3-stage PGA circular motion (mpg 2.5MB)	1-stage PGA circular motion (mpg 1.9MB)	1-stage PGA bend motion (mpg 2.9MB)	2-stage PGA bend motion (mpg 4.4MB)
2-stage PGA vertical bend (mpg 4.5MB)	PGA bend motion	PGA translation	SMT bend motion

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