Proceedings of the 26th Annual International Conference of the IEEE EMBS
San Francisco, CA, USA September 1-5, 2004
Spring over muscle (SOM) actuator for rehabilitation devices
Kartik Bharadwaj, Kevin W. Hollander, Christian A. Mathis, and Thomas G. Sugar
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Arizona State University, AZ, USA
Abstract - For people affected by stroke, frequent physical
therapy has been shown to be an effective form of
rehabilitation. To this goal, several home therapy devices have
been developed. Many of these devices may benefit from the
use of a bi-directional pneumatic muscle actuator. This paper
presents the concept and design of the double-acting,
compliant, Spring Over Muscle (SOM) actuator. The principle
design uses a spring in parallel with a pneumatic muscle
actuator. This concept is economical, and easily scalable.
Additionally, a design proposal for an ankle rehabilitation
device, which incorporates the SOM actuator, is discussed.
Keywords Actuator, rehabilitation, spring over muscle
I. INTRODUCTION
Physical therapy is the primary means of rehabilitation
and recovery for persons having suffered the debilitating
injury of stroke. Unfortunately, in the U.S. health care
system, insurance companies are only willing to pay for
professional physical therapy assistance and this is limited
to only a certain number of sessions, spread over a limited
period of time [1]. It has been shown that stroke victims
receiving frequent physical therapy have much greater
chance of recovery than other typical forms of treatment [2-
5].
Recently, efforts to build devices for rehabilitation have
been pursued [6-10]. Many of these efforts are aimed at
building lightweight, economical systems that use
pneumatic or McKibben type [11] actuators. The goal here
is to provide easily accessible, repetitive task therapy
opportunities by developing rehabilitation systems usable by
patients at their own homes. They can thus benefit from the
application of more frequent therapy sessions without
having their insurance carrier to bear additional costs.
The pneumatic actuators, or air muscles, are well
known for their excellent strength to weight ratios and low
cost [11]. However, like their biological counterparts, they
operate in contractile motion only. Hence, air muscles have
to be used in antagonistic pairs to achieve bi-directional
motion about a single joint. Antagonistic pairs of actuators
are often an acceptable design solution for a simple flexion
and extension joint, like the knee or elbow (i.e. 1DOF).
Unfortunately, this arrangement requires the control of a
minimum of two actuators; in more complex joints (i.e. >
1DOF) even more actuators and controls would be required.
The main objective of this work is to develop a
lightweight, bi-directional, pneumatic Spring Over Muscle
(SOM) actuator, as an improvement over air muscles, for
applications such as stroke therapy devices.
This work was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (contract number 1-HD-3-3353).
0-7803-8439-3/04/$20.002004 IEEE
II. METHODOLOGY
Pneumatic muscles are becoming more commonly used
as actuators in modern robotics [14-15]. The reason for this
is the fact that they have high force to weight ratios and that
they are inherently compliant, which serves the purpose of
built-in safety. Pneumatic muscle actuators consist of a
rubber bladder enclosed within a helical braid that is
clamped on both ends. As the bladder is pressurized, its
volume increases and the braid, and clamps act to shorten
the overall length of the actuator.
Pressurization of an air muscle creates contractile
forces only and the amount of contraction available in the
muscle is primarily determined by the nominal diameter of
the bladder and braid. Literature has shown that the pressure
supplied to the air muscle determines the available force at
given deflections [11]. However, the ultimate force of any
individual actuator is determined by the burst-failure
properties of the rubber bladder and the tensile strength of
the braid.
Currently there exists the need for devices capable of
more complicated motion to assist movement of joints like
the ankle and the shoulder. These joints have primary
degrees of freedom beyond simple flexion and extension.
To successfully rehabilitate such complex joints, three-link
parallel manipulators, or tripod mechanisms, have been
developed previously [12-13]. Tripod mechanisms have the
range of motion and simplicity of control suitable to the
ankle and shoulder joints of a stroke patient. Consider the
use of traditional air muscle actuators for this kind of a joint
mechanism. Such a device would necessitate the control of
at least four to six actuators, which becomes unnecessarily
complex.
In this paper, we propose an actuator design with a
SOM configuration, which when implemented as part of
rehabilitation devices for complex joints like the ankle or
shoulder would reduce the number of actuators needed and
thus would simplify control of the device.
III. DESIGN OF THE ACTUATOR
The basic concept of a bi-directional actuator, as seen in
Fig. 1, is a pneumatic muscle attached in parallel with a
standard compression spring. In this arrangement, the spring
resists compressive forces while a pressurized pneumatic
muscle resists tensile forces. The extent to which a spring
resists compressive forces is dependent on its stiffness while
a pneumatic muscles resistance to tensile forces depends on
the property of the rubber bladder and the braid. Two
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 Fig. 1. SOM concept A compression spring is added in parallel to the Fig. 2. SOM - I actuator prototype A spring is fitted over the muscle to
pneumatic muscle. In extension, the muscle resists the tensile forces. In resist compressive forces. An outer tube prevents buckling of the actuator.
compression, the inflated muscle and the compression spring resist the
compressive forces.

prototypes of the SOM actuators have been constructed.

The first actuator prototype, SOM I, as seen in Fig. 2,
incorporates a commercially available Festo pneumatic
muscle - MAS-20-N (Festo AG & Co. KG, Germany). The
muscle is enclosed by two pieces of acrylic tubing, which
are separated by a stainless steel compression spring (K =
11.45 N/mm). The muscle and the tube-spring arrangement
is housed inside another piece of acrylic tubing of larger
diameter that prevents the spring from buckling. Two end
plates, one on either end of the tube-spring arrangement, Fig. 3. SOM II actuator assembly A spring is inserted inside a cylinder-
connect it to the muscle. Adjustments at either end of the plunger arrangement. The muscle in slipped over top of the cylinder to
create a bi-directional actuator.
actuator allow changes in the spring preload.
An inlet valve, mounted on the side of one of the inner
acrylic tubes allows inlet air to directly enter the muscle. As
the muscle is pressurized, the two inner tubes push against
the spring, resulting in compression. This gives the inward
stroke of the actuator. As the air is released, the potential
energy stored in the spring exerts an outward thrust, which
results in the overall extension of the actuator.
The second actuator prototype, SOMII, is much
smaller in scale compared to the SOM-I. The SOM-II was
designed with much less force requirements and thus uses a
less stiff spring. For potential application to rehabilitation
devices a less stiff spring preserves a majority of the Fig. 4. SOM - II actuator prototype A lightweight simple bi-directional
actuator is designed. The spring is hidden inside the muscle for safety.
compliance that a pneumatic muscle typically provides.
When compared to the first prototype, the SOM-II is more
the cylinder from where the air exits into the bladder
compact, light in weight, and requires less force to initiate
through holes in the chamber wall. When the muscle is
deflection.
pressurized, the plunger compresses the spring and results in
The SOM-II actuator, as seen in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4,
an inward stroke. The outward stroke from this arrangement
incorporates a cylinder-plunger arrangement, made of
is achieved by using the stored potential energy of a spring.
Delrin with a stainless steel compression spring (K = 1.40
Unlike pneumatic muscles that create only contractile
N/mm) enclosed within the cylinder chamber. The plunger
forces, the SOMI and SOM-II actuators create forces in
head slides smoothly on the inner surface of the cylinder,
two directions - contraction and extension. Similar to our
while its shaft slides in the through hole of the plastic plug
previous work, preloads can be actively adjusted to
that caps the end of the cylinder. The cylinder-plunger
dynamically vary the actuators apparent stiffness [16, 17].
arrangement is surrounded and clamped within the interior
A variety of actuator characteristics can be changed
of a McKibben style pneumatic muscle.
through proper selection of the spring and pneumatic
An inlet air valve is mounted on the side of the
muscles. It is straightforward and easy to create a structure
cylinder. Air passes through the inlet valve and enters the
sized specifically for any intended application and thus cost-
bladder through a channel down the long axis of the
effective scalability is easily achieved.
cylinder. This opens into the spring enclosing chamber of

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 IV. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION OF DESIGN

The SOM-I and SOMII actuator were both tested

under tensile and compressive loads in a commercial tensile
testing machine (MTS Sintech 1/S, Minnesota). Before the
start of every tension-compression test cycle the actuator is
brought to the reference home position at zero applied force
and zero input air pressure. It is then attached to mounting
adapters on the testing machine and the muscle is inflated to
the required pressure. The test frame measures the initial
deflection of the actuator. Data extracted were used to
produce the set of graphs of force versus displacement at the
different pressure levels.
It may be noted in Fig. 5 that, with an increase in
pressure level, there is an increase in the stiffness of the
spring muscle system in the SOM-I actuator, indicated by
the slope of the force-displacement curves. The SOMII
actuator also follows a similar trend, but over a lower force
range.
When the air muscle in SOM - II is inflated to a certain
pressure, as seen in Fig. 6, it acts independently during the
tension cycle to resist the applied forces. In compression,
the resistance offered to applied forces is a combination of
the air muscle and spring. In this stage of the test cycle, the
graph of force versus displacement gradually becomes less
steep with the slope approximating the stiffness of the
spring as the pressure is reduced. It may be noted that the
onset of this stage is deferred as the pressure level increases.
This indicates that the muscle and spring together resist Fig. 6. Experimental Isobaric Force vs. Deflection Curves for SOM II
compressive forces with a decrease in inlet air pressure.
This trend at lower pressure levels indicates that the actuator
follows similar characteristics at higher-pressure levels, but V. DISCUSSION
at higher-pressure levels, the compression of the air inside
the muscle dominates. Complex joints like the ankle and shoulder require
therapy in multiple degrees of freedom. To achieve the
complex motion required by this joint, a tripod mechanism
is proposed. A typical tripod mechanism consists of a flat
plate and three bi-directional linear actuators. As a means of
simplification of the system, we propose that sufficient
ankle joint motion can be accomplished by the use of two
actuation links and one fixed link, the fixed link being the
subjects leg. For this approach using typical pneumatic
muscles, would necessitate four such actuators. Although
this design is possible, control of the four actuators will add
to the overall complexity of the device.
We propose a better approach that uses two bi-
directional SOM actuators in an ankle therapy device for
rehabilitation, in place of the typical pneumatic muscles.
This would reduce the number of actuators to just two and
hence simplify control of the device. As seen in Fig. 7, the
two actuators would be anchored just below the knee and
attached on either side of the foot. Synchronized or
independent motion from each of these actuators can be
used to achieve a complex array of ankle movements that
Fig. 5. Experimental Isobaric Force vs. Deflection Curves for SOM I include dorsiflexion/ plantarflexion as well as
inversion/eversion.

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Fig. 7. Conceptual ankle joint device design for repetitive task therapy
The experimental data gathered prove that the concept
of the SOM actuator is feasible and that the achieved
displacement range is adequate for the proposed concept of
an ankle rehabilitation device. The addition of the passive
spring to the pneumatic muscle creates an actuator that is
stiffer, that has less hysteresis, and that has improved overall
linearity. The pressure ranges required to operate the SOM
actuator are greater than those in a typical pneumatic
muscle, operating over the same displacement. This increase
in pressure range is a reduction in device sensitivity to
pressure, which translates to the potential use of simpler and
more economical pressure control systems. In spite of the
benefits of the additional spring attached parallel to the
pneumatic muscle, the SOM is less compliant than a
pneumatic muscle operating alone. This however is not a
major concern as the compromise between the compliance
and the desired device characteristic can be resolved
through proper selection of the passive spring and braid.
VI. CONCLUSION
The goal of this work was to develop a bi-directional,
lightweight, compliant actuator for application in stroke
therapy devices that could be used at home. In this paper,
we propose an economical and practical idea of the
application of the SOM actuator in a rehabilitation device
for the ankle. The future work for this project is to evaluate
its application in the proposed ankle device, to design the
ankle therapy device, and to construct and test a prototype.
The basic nature of the SOM actuator design being
simple, allows for the possibility of inexpensive large-scale
manufacturing. Thus, the SOM actuator offers great
improvement over the original pneumatic muscle design
characteristics and has an extended and varied range of
application in robotic devices, therapeutic and otherwise.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to acknowledge the collaborations
with Kinetic Muscles Inc., Dr. J. He, and Dr. M Carhart. A
patent application has been filed for the Spring Over Muscle
Actuator by Arizona State University.
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