Fabrication and modeling of temperature-controllable artificial muscle actuator

Research about the artificial muscle made of fishing lines or sewing threads, called the twisted and coiled polymer actuator (abbreviated as TCA in this paper) has collected many interests, recently. Since TCA has a specific power surpassing the human skeletal muscle theoretically, it is expected to be a new generation of the artificial muscle actuator. In order that the TCA is utilized as a useful actuator, this paper introduces the fabrication and the modeling of the temperature-controllable TCA. With an embedded micro thermistor, the TCA is able to measure temperature directly, and feedback control is realized. The safe range of the force and temperature for the continuous use of the TCA was identified through experiments, and the closed-loop temperature control is successfully performed without the breakage of TCA.