Electromagnetic Artificial Muscle Technologies Revisited: Basis for the Design of Magnetic Coupled Artificial Exoskeletal Muscle

Abstract

Most artificial muscles are either pneumatically or thermally driven resulting to robots being bulky, heavy and inflexible due to additional external pump attachments. With these reasons, electromagnetic artificial muscles are considered in the design for mobility. However, current designs for electromagnetic artificial muscles only satisfy either great force to stroke ratio or great force to weight ratio or low power consumption but none has achieved all three. This study aims to design an electromagnetically driven magnetic coupled artificial exoskeletal muscle that can exhibit better force to stroke, force to weight and lesser power. As a result, the prototype was able to attain a force to stroke ratio of 0.333 N/mm, force to weight ratio of 18.18 N/kg and can consume a maximum of 53.1 Watts of power. Compared to elastic actuator, the prototype was able to satisfy all three advantages of an electromagnetic artificial muscle.