Microfabricated tunable bending stiffness device

Author

Tabata, Osamu ; Konishi, Satoshi ; Cusin, Pierre ; Ito, Yuuichi ; Kawai, Fumie ; Hirai, Shinichi ; Kawamura, Sadao

Author_Institution

Ritsumeikan Univ., Kyoto, Japan

fYear

2000

fDate

23-27 Jan 2000

Firstpage

23

Lastpage

27

Abstract

This paper reports a device with tunable bending stiffness realized by microfabrication technology. Based on the newly proposed principles, two types of devices whose bending stiffness were controlled by electrostatic force and pneumatic force were fabricated. From the analysis and experiments, the feasibility of the proposed principles were confirmed and the performances of the prototyped devices were demonstrated

Keywords

bending; biomimetics; compliance control; electrostatic actuators; handicapped aids; intelligent actuators; micromachining; patient rehabilitation; pneumatic control equipment; sport; artificial muscle; balloon device; deformable pneumatic actuator; deformable shell; electrostatic force; microfabrication; natural compliance; pneumatic force; prototype device performance; rehabilitation; soft actuators; sports training; stacked film device; tunable bending stiffness device; Electrodes; Electrostatics; Force control; Force measurement; Humans; Motion control; Performance analysis; Pneumatic actuators; Prototypes; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, 2000. MEMS 2000. The Thirteenth Annual International Conference on

Conference_Location

Miyazaki

ISSN

1084-6999

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5273-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MEMSYS.2000.838484

Filename

838484