Development of Electrostatic Motor as Biomimicking Skeletal Muscle.

最近矢野提出了一种新的肌肉收缩理论，称为静电直线电机模型。他的理论还没有得到证实。然而，该模型的原理对于实现人工肌肉非常有吸引力。因为它可以一致地解释几乎所有肌肉收缩现象。因此，我们开始开发一种静电直线电机作为仿生骨骼肌。基本电机单元由一个平行板电容器和一个由介质材料制成的滑块组成。在此模型的基础上，推导了电机各种特性的理论公式。通过对电机基本模型的实验验证，得出了如下结论：1)理论公式与实验结果吻合较好；2)减小电机厚度可以增大电机的推力；3)集成微米级电机单元是提高推力的有效方法；4)电机定子与滑块之间的动摩擦系数应小于1。在此基础上，设计了简单的电机模型，验证了该电机的可行性。该直线电机有望在实际中得到应用。

Recently Yano proposed a new theory of muscle contraction, termed Electrostatic linear motor model. His theory has not yet been authorized. The principle of this model, however, is very attractive for realizing an artificial muscle. Because it can explain almost all phenomena of muscle contraction consistently. We, therefore, started developing an electrostatic linear motor as a biomimicking skeletal muscle.The fundamental motor unit consists of a parallel plate capacitor and a slider made of dielectric material. Based on this model, we derived the theoretical formulae for the various characteristics of the motor.Following facts were revealed through the experiments using the fundamental model of the motor.1)The theoretical formulae agree well with the experimental results.2)The thrust can be increased by decreasing the thickness of the motor.3)Integration of the micrometer sized motor units is very effective to increase the thrust.4)The coefficient of kinetic friction between the stator and the slider should be less than one.Base on these results, we designed the simple model to know the feasibility of this motor. This linear motor is expected to be able to use in practice.