Design and Development of Stewart Platform using Air Muscles

This report mainly deals with the replacement of hydraulic or pneumatic cylinders in Stewart platform by newly developed actuators known as "Air muscles" which functions like pneumatic or hydraulic actuators. A preliminary attempt has been made to design and develop the Stewart platform with the use of Air muscles.In this development, the Stewart platform has four air muscles (6mm diameter) connected between the two platforms with the help of aluminium hooks. one of the platforms is fixed and another is free to take positions. a compressor is used to supply the air under pressure into a two-way common manifold which consists of six flow control valves for actuating air muscles.Due to the flexibility of air muscles, they cannot carry the compressive loads. so as to obtain the exact positions, this platform is inverted. the larger size platform is fixed to a stand and the air muscles along with smaller size platform are hanged in air. the smaller size platform is loaded with weights so that the air muscles will be under tension. now these air muscles tend to expand contract between both the platforms while operating with pressures from 1 to 5 bar in order to obtain the different positions. during the operation period one LASER light is fitted to the smaller platform to recognize the various positions.