TY - JOUR
T1 - Novel Twisted and Coiled Polymer Fiber Actuator Fabricated from Polymer-Coated Optical Fiber
AU - Masuya, Ken
AU - Tahara, Kenji
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received October 23, 2020; accepted February 26, 2021. Date of publication March 31, 2021; date of current version April 20, 2021. This letter was recommended for publication by Associate Editor C. Majidi and Editor C. Laschi upon evaluation of the reviewers’ comments. This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research, Organization of Fundamental Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and in part by JSPS KAKENHI under Grant JP20H00610. (Corresponding author: Ken Masuya.) Ken Masuya is with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8550, Japan (e-mail: ken.masuya@ieee.org).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.
PY - 2021/7
Y1 - 2021/7
N2 - This study proposes a novel twisted and coiled polymer fiber (TCPF) actuator fabricated from a polymer-coated optical fiber. The TCPF actuator is a soft actuator that is driven by heating; the TCPF actuator in combination with a cooling system has been widely studied for applications in robotics. Sensing is a major issue in such units; in particular, temperature sensing is important for the safe usage of the TCPF. To achieve this, the electrical properties of the heating wire are typically utilized. However, this method is affected by the input voltage noise because the circuit used for actuation is the same as that used for sensing. To separate these circuits, this study developed a temperature-sensing method for the TCPF based on an optical fiber. For propagating only the heat of the polymer to the optical fiber, we embedded the optical fiber in the TCPF. This study experimentally demonstrated that the TCPF actuator fabricated using the polymer-coated optical fiber can be driven by heating. Furthermore, using the developed sensing method, we achieved temperature and force control under isometric conditions.
AB - This study proposes a novel twisted and coiled polymer fiber (TCPF) actuator fabricated from a polymer-coated optical fiber. The TCPF actuator is a soft actuator that is driven by heating; the TCPF actuator in combination with a cooling system has been widely studied for applications in robotics. Sensing is a major issue in such units; in particular, temperature sensing is important for the safe usage of the TCPF. To achieve this, the electrical properties of the heating wire are typically utilized. However, this method is affected by the input voltage noise because the circuit used for actuation is the same as that used for sensing. To separate these circuits, this study developed a temperature-sensing method for the TCPF based on an optical fiber. For propagating only the heat of the polymer to the optical fiber, we embedded the optical fiber in the TCPF. This study experimentally demonstrated that the TCPF actuator fabricated using the polymer-coated optical fiber can be driven by heating. Furthermore, using the developed sensing method, we achieved temperature and force control under isometric conditions.
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U2 - 10.1109/LRA.2021.3070247
DO - 10.1109/LRA.2021.3070247
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85103795855
SN - 2377-3766
VL - 6
SP - 4883
EP - 4890
JO - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
JF - IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters
IS - 3
M1 - 9392287
ER -