Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 9.46
An artificial smooth muscle actuator that mimics a human hand (left) and a
fabricated human joint mobility and power augmentation system equipped with IPMNCs
(right).
Another method of using IPMNC actuators is to package them as human skeletal
joint mobility and power augmentation systems in the form of wearable, electrically
self-powered, exoskeletal prostheses, orthoses, and integrated muscle fabric system
components such as jackets, trousers, gloves, and boots. These features are intended
to improve the quality of a human system and can be extended to power augmentation
of attire for advanced soldier and astronaut systems and as prosthetic devices to
empower paraplegics, quadriplegics, and disabled and elderly people, as well as a
variety of other robotic and medical applications.
The essence of the operation of such prostheses, orthoses, and wearable attire (smart
muscle fabric) is that, for example, a skeletal joint such as the elbow will be equipped
with a flexible strip-like bending muscle made from a family of IPMNCs. As noted,
IPMNCs have the ability to sense any dynamic motion imparted to them by generating
tens of millivolts of electricity (for a 10-
2-mm synthetic muscle bent by 1 cm
in a cantilever configuration) and the same muscle can generate a torque of about 20
gf-cm, with 9 V and 100 mA, to augment the bending power of a skeletal joint.
Thus, such prostheses, orthoses, and smooth muscle fabric systems can be
integrated devices equipped with sensing and actuation that can be used for positive-
feedback robotic control for the mobility of any joint such as the knee, elbow,
shoulder, neck, hip, or fingers.
Human skeletons normally have 98 skeletal joints. Some of these joints, such
as the jaw's temporomandibular joint, hand's radio carpal (wrist) joint, fingers'
interphalangeal (IP) joints, or thumb's CM joint, are highly active. Others, such as
the foot's subtalar joint or transverse tarsal joint, are less active. Yet other joints are
rather integrated joints, such as the spine cervical, thoracic, or lumbar vertebrate
joints. The human skeletal joints are exoskeletally powered by elaborate systems of
skeletal muscles—some 4,000 of them—mostly operating in an antagonist config-
uration in which families of pairs of contractile muscles perform articulated joint
motions. The integrated smooth muscle systems shown in figure 9.46 as integrated
joint power augmentation muscle systems will eventually allow robots to be anthro-
pomorphic and thus capable of carrying distributed loads.
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