The objective of this project was to design a biomimetic tendon-driven actuation system for powered orthotic and prosthetic hand applications in rehabilitation robotics. The actuation system is based on the combination of compliant tendon cables and one-way Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) wires that form a set of artificial muscle pairs for the flexion-extension or abduction-adduction of an artificial finger joint. This type of configuration enables the emulation of key biological features of the natural muscle-tendon arrangement found in the human hand, such as the compliant and bi-directional agonist-antagonist pulling motion about each joint.
Gilardi G., Haslam E., Bundhoo V., and Park E.J., 2010, “A Shape Memory Alloy Based Tendon-Driven Actuation System for Biomimetic Artificial Fingers, part II: Modeling and Control”, Robotica, 28(5), pp. 675-687.
Ko J., Martin B.J., Gilardi G., Haslam E., and Park E.J, 2011, “Fuzzy PWM-PID control of co-contracting antagonistic shape memory alloy muscle pairs in an artificial finger”, Mechatronics, 21(7), pp. 1190-1202.
- The code has been written and tested in Matlab/Simulink version 8.3 (R2014a).
- Run
Initialization.mbefore runningFinger_Full_Modelin Simulink. - All variables are saved in the workspace after the simulation.
plotResults.mplots the main results.- Use variable
ProfileTypeinInitialization.mto specify different desired time-profiles. - The desired time-profiles are defined in
Finger_Desired_Position.m.
ProfileType = 1 (Main results, results SMA1, results SMA2)
- rotation to -25 degrees using SMA1 (SMA2 used as passive spring).
- cool down period (both SMAs used as passive springs).
- rotation to -30 degrees using SMA1 (SMA2 used as passive spring).
ProfileType = 2 (Main results, results SMA1, results SMA2)
- rotation to -25 degrees using SMA1 (SMA2 used as passive spring).
- rotation to -55 degrees using both SMAs (motion is driven by SMA2 while SMA1 is used to reduce overshooting).