Flexible push pneumatic actuator with high elongation

Abstract New concepts regarding Artificial Muscles (AM) are being presented in recent research studies. This paper presents a modern flexible push pneumatic actuator, which has higher elongation than most popular AM. It has good environmental adaptability, and it is always elastic during work (can bend) when most AM are rigid when pressurized. If the actuator has appropriately designed endings, it can work as a push or pull/push actuator, which is an important advantage. This paper presents static characteristics of different variants of the actuator. The results show that the actuator (3 mm diameter and 25 mm length) can generate a force greater than 3 N with 0.4 MPa pressure and an elongation higher than 7 mm. The reported actuator is very easy to design and manufacture; and thus, it can be widely used in many applications, e.g. pneumatically driven robotic devices.