ARTIFICIAL MUSCLES: STATE OF THE ART AND A NEW TECHNOLOGY.

Pneumatic artificial muscles have been known since 1930s. Their advantage is in a simple design and good specific power [Madden 2004, Kocis 2016b]. However, the critical disadvantage is the requirement of an air compressor or a compressed air accumulator. This disadvantage disables the use of pneumatic artificial muscles in mobile robotics. In constrast to pneumatic artificial muscles dielectric elastomer actuators as basic units of artificial muscles are convenient for mobile robots propulsion [O'Brien 2012, Moghadam 2015]. We investigate a new design of pneumatic artificial muscles that can be powered by the energy of electrostatic field. This paper describes the design of a new artificial muscle technology and solves a behavior under small strains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]