The increasing demand for physical interaction between humans and robots has led to the development of robots that guarantee safe behavior when human contact occurs. However, attaining established levels of performance while ensuring safety poses formidable challenges in mechanical design, actuation, sensing and control. To achieve safety without compromising performance, the human-friendly rob...

This paper presents the biped Lucy and the first experimental results of this robot. Lucy is actuated by Pleated Pneumatic Artificial Muscles, which have a very high power to weight ratio and an inherent adaptable compliance. These characteristics will be used to make Lucy walk in a dynamic stable way while exploiting the adaptable passive behaviour of these muscles. The paper will describe bri...

In this talk I will first briefly summarize the many impressive results we have achieved along the road so far traveled in the field of AI including some concrete results obtained at the IIIA-CSIC. Next I will describe some of the future challenges to be faced along the (long) road we still have ahead of us with an emphasis on integrated systems, a necessary step towards human-level AI. Finally...

Improved electrically powered artificial muscles are needed for generating force, moving objects, and accomplishing work. Carbon nanotube aerogel sheets are the sole component of new artificial muscles that provide giant elongations and elongation rates of 220% and (3.7 x 10(4))% per second, respectively, at operating temperatures from 80 to 1900 kelvin. These solid-state-fabricated sheets are ...

Artificial muscles are formed by attaching a conducting polymeric film to a non-conducting one. Applying an electrical current on the muscle. a macroscopic bending movement appears on it. Study of curvature variations and related parameters, such as speed of motion or energy of curvature, is necessary for improving the efficiency of these devices. In a previous work. a one-cam computer vision s...

The power to weight ratio of the actuators is an important design factor for running robots. In this regard pleated pneumatic artificial muscles are excellent actuators. Another advantage is that they can actuate a joint directly, avoiding the additional weight and cost of a gearbox. Obviously the weight of the pressure control valves has to be taken into consideration as well. For this applica...

As reported previously, artificial selection of house mice caused a 2.7-fold increase in voluntary wheel running of four replicate selected lines compared with four random-bred control lines. Two of the selected lines developed a high incidence of a small-muscle phenotype ("mini muscles") in the plantar flexor group of the hindlimb, which apparently results from a simple Mendelian recessive all...

In lower-limb rehabilitation systems, exoskeleton robots are one of the most important components. These help patients to execute repetitive exercises under guidance physiotherapists. Recently, pneumatic artificial muscles (PAM), a kind actuator that acts similarly human muscles, have been chosen power robot for better human–machine interaction. order enhance performance PAM-based robot, this a...