A Biological Micro Actuator: Graded and Closed-Loop Control of Insect Leg Motion by Electrical Stimulation of Muscles

Feng Cao, Chao Zhang, Tat Thang Vo Doan, Yao Li, Daniyal Haider Sangi, Jie Sheng Koh, Ngoc Anh Huynh, Mohamed Fareez Bin Aziz, Hao Yu Choo, Kazuo Ikeda, Pieter Abbeel, Michel M Maharbiz and Hirotaka Sato

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-14

Abstract: In this study, a biological microactuator was demonstrated by closed-loop motion control of the front leg of an insect (Mecynorrhina torquata, beetle) via electrical stimulation of the leg muscles. The three antagonistic pairs of muscle groups in the front leg enabled the actuator to have three degrees of freedom: protraction/retraction, levation/depression, and extension/flexion. We observed that the threshold amplitude (voltage) required to elicit leg motions was approximately 1.0 V; thus, we fixed the stimulation amplitude at 1.5 V to ensure a muscle response. The leg motions were finely graded by alternation of the stimulation frequencies: higher stimulation frequencies elicited larger leg angular displacement. A closed-loop control system was then developed, where the stimulation frequency was the manipulated variable for leg-muscle stimulation (output from the final control element to the leg muscle) and the angular displacement of the leg motion was the system response. This closed-loop control system, with an optimized proportional gain and update time, regulated the leg to set at predetermined angular positions. The average electrical stimulation power consumption per muscle group was 148 µW. These findings related to and demonstrations of the leg motion control offer promise for the future development of a reliable, low-power, biological legged machine (i.e., an insect–machine hybrid legged robot).

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0105389 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 05389&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0105389

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105389

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().