Implementation of OilBased Hydraulic Artificial Muscles in a BioInspired Configuration The hydraulic artificial muscles (HAMs) have been studied recently due to the high powerweight ratio, inherent safety and their humanlike characteristics which provide a great potential in biomedical applications like exoskeleton robots and artificial limbs. In this paper, a new oilbased hydraulic artificial muscle (OHAM) with a bioinspired configuration is presented. The common parts in traditional pneumatic artificial muscles (PAMs) like compressors, pumps and tanks are replaced with linear actuator and cylinders which makes the platform of the OHAM more compact. Moreover, a phenomenological model is used for the dynamic modeling of the OHAM in the static and dynamic states. Then, a new program in LabVIEW software is developed for the signal processing of the system which helps applicants visualize every aspect of the experimental tests, including hardware configuration, data measurement, and troubleshooting. Additionally, characteristics of the OHAM are determined by the implementation of experimental tests for a single artificial muscle. Finally, the bioinspired configuration is implemented in order to demonstrate the usefulness of the hardware and software of OHAMs in an opposing pair configuration.

A SpringAided TwoDimensional Electromechanical Spine Architecture for BioInspired Robots This paper presents a distributed sixlink twodimensional electromechanical actuator that emulates a biological spine. The gearless actuator is made by stacking modules of Eshaped cores along with integrated springs. A coil excitation induces magnetic flux in the core, which produces electromechanical force in the air gap between two adjacent cores. The proposed actuator is driven by dcdc converters with current control. Electromechanical force analysis for the proposed spine architecture with different airgap distances and spring analysis that improve the actuatorxe2x80x99s performance are discussed. Experimental results show different biological motions with a prototype design. The prototype can produce a maximum torque of 1.4 Nm.