3D-Printed Modified Pinch Valve for Controlling Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

Soft robotics is a rapidly growing fields in the past decade. Despite its compliant nature and low weight, which is suitable for human interaction applications, still suffering from the low-speed actuation compared to the rigid actuators. In this paper, a 3D printed modified pinch valve is presented to control a pneumatic artificial muscle. This valve can provide high flow rate which can increase the pneumatic muscles actuation speed. 3D printed artificial muscle is used to validate the controllability of the valve. The muscle frequency increased from 0.1 Hz to reach 3.5 Hz. A chain of five muscles is controlled and reach 1.5 Hz.