The Influence of Temperature Conditions on Position Control of Fluidic Muscle

Pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) are of special importance in the field of pneumatic drives and in robotics. Different designs have been developed, but the McKibben muscle is the most popular and is made commercially available by different companies, e.g. Fluidic Muscle manufactured by Festo Company. There are a lot of advantages of PAMs like the high strength, good power/weight ratio, good power/volume ratio, low price, little maintenance needed, great compliance, compactness, flexibility, inherent safety and usage under rough environments. The objective of this research note is to determine the error of positioning with a Fluidic Muscle at cold and at normal operating temperature of the system with sliding mode control. The results of the experiments showed that the positioning error of the Fluidic Muscle under the experimental conditions was 0.01 mm