Abstract

The McKibben muscle is a type of pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) that pressurizes and creates a contractile force. It is heavily researched today due to its desired characteristics of being cheap, lightweight, easy to fabricate, and serves as an analogue for human muscle for its primary use in healthcare as well as other fields. However, the main challenge that hampers widespread use is the nonlinear dynamics that makes implementation of control strategies difficult to model. More specifically, whenever the pressurization occurs in the McKibben muscles, there is an input lag in both its inflation and deflation defined as hysteresis. In this paper, a tunable slider concept was designed to passively constrain geometric deformation and reduce hysteretic drift. Four muscle configurations (100 mm Thin/Thick, 150 mm Thin/Thick) were evaluated under a minimum of 960 actuation cycles of pressure-contraction data empirically. Results demonstrated up to 91.5% reductions in centroid drift and significant narrowing of hysteresis loop under varying constraints. The proposed framework establishes a reproducible methodology for analysis and characterization of PAM and is released open sourced to support further research in nonlinear actuator modeling.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Actuators--Mathematical models; Robotics in medicine; Pneumatic machinery; Smart materials; Artificial organs; Bionics

Publication Date

12-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Mechanical Engineering (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Mechanical Engineering

College

Kate Gleason College of Engineering

Advisor

Kathleen Lamkin-Kennard

Advisor/Committee Member

Agamemnon Crassidis

Advisor/Committee Member

Ali Baheri

Comments

This thesis has been embargoed. The full-text will be available on or around 12/15/2026.

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

Plan Codes

MECE-MS

Download

Available for download on Wednesday, December 16, 2026

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