Closed-Loop Position Control of Artificial Muscles
with a Single Integral Action
Application to robust positioning of McKibben artificial muscle
Bertrand Tondu
CNRS ; LAAS ; 7 Avenue du colonel Roche, F-31077 Toulouse Cedex 4, France
University of Toulouse, UPS, INSA, INP, ISAE ; UT1, UTM, LAAS ; F-31077 Toulouse Cedex 4, France
bertrand.tondu@insa-toulouse.fr
Abstract—Artificial muscles constitute a large class of non-linear
actuators characterized by their own stiffness and damping. We
analyze in the case of an axial contraction artificial muscle the
relevance of a single integral action closed-loop controller. The
basic idea of our approach consists in taking advantage of
artificial muscle own stiffness and damping in order to substitute
for a classic PID-controller an I-controller with as a consequence
only one parameter to tune. Step and tracking responses
performed with a pneumatic textile-braided McKibben muscle
are reported showing the practical efficiency of the method to
combine accuracy and load robustness performances.
Keywords: Artificial muscle closed-loop control; McKibben muscle
I. INTRODUCTION
Artificial muscles are a large class of actuators
characterized by an open-loop positioning controllability in
analogy with skeletal muscle behaviour. The artificial muscle
control variable plays the role of the neural activation making
possible to adapt muscle stiffness as the natural muscle does.
Numerous technologies with various physical or chemical
control variables were developed in the last decade with the
hope to substitute for classic actuators these ‘soft actuators’ in a
large range of applications where lightness, compactness and
natural compliance are necessary. However any artificial
muscle technology is generally based on the use of soft and/or
shape changing materials inducing highly non-linear
phenomena with, as a consequence, a real difficulty to get an
accurate positioning of the artificial muscle in closed-loop.
This highly non-linear character has often led researchers to
consider non-linear or fuzzy logic based control approaches,
eventually combined with internal models, to try to accurately
control technical devices – essentially robots – actuated by
artificial muscles (as, for example, in [1]-[3] for limiting
ourselves to pneumatic artificial muscles), with as a drawback
a large complexity in the control parameter tuning. The
originality of our approach consists in reconsidering this
problem by dealing with a single artificial muscle whose end-
position must be accurately controlled in closed-loop. To reach
this goal we do the assumption that a single ‘external’
integrator combined with ‘internal’ muscle stiffness and
damping will be able to satisfy both the accuracy requirement
and the robustness requirement for load variations as manual
perturbations. The paper is organized as follows: in a section II
978-1-4673-1388-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
we propose a simple non-linear model of a contractile artificial
muscle including a damping factor from which are derived
open-loop and closed-loop positioning simulations; a
preliminary stability analysis is then developed in section III
before reporting in section IV experiments performed with a
pneumatic McKibben artificial muscle.
II. MODELLING AND SIMULATION OF OPEN-AND-CLOSED
LOOP CONTROL OF A TYPICAL ARTIFICIAL MUSCLE
A. A simple phenomenological model and its positioning
performances in open-loop
The notion of artificial model is defined in analogy with the
phenomenological behaviour of the skeletal muscle. If we don’t
take into account the passive elasticity, a simple model of the
force generated by the skeletal muscle can be written as
follows:
x 0 ≤ u ≤ 1
F = uFmax (1 − ) − Fdamp ( x& ) with  (1)
xmax  0 ≤ x ≤ xmax
where x is the shortening length of the muscle supposed to be
inextensible since no passive elongation is considered and u is
a normalized control variable. The first term of the model
catches the static behaviour of the skeletal muscle by
linearizing the spring-like character of the muscle with a
stiffness proportional to u; as a consequence, Fmax represents
the maximum isometric muscle force while xmax represents the
maximum length shortening independent of u. At our
knowledge, N. Hogan [4] was among the first to show the
relevance of this model which however does not express the
variation of maximum contraction with neural activation. The
second term of the model represents the natural damping of the
muscle without which the muscle will contract with endless
oscillations. This damping factor is a consequence of friction
phenomena inside the muscle. In the framework of this paper,
we will consider two friction models: the first one is a linear
viscous friction model of constant coefficient we will note fv :
Fdamp ( x& ) = f v x& (2)
The second one is a non-linear friction model combining a
static friction whose constant coefficient will be noted µs with a
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kinetic friction whose coefficient can vary with speed
according to the following equation: rM= 0
rM= 0.1
Fdamp ( x& ) = sgn( x& )[(µ s − µ k _ lim )e − x / x k + µ k _ lim ]
& &
(3)
rM= 0.2

X-Position (cm )
where µk_lim corresponds to a limit kinetic friction coefficient rM= 0.3
and x& k is a speed constant determining the quickness with rM= 0.4
which the current kinetic friction varies towards its limit rM= 0.5
(Fig.1). If µs>µk_lim with a high value of x& k the model can be rM= 0.6
considered as approaching a classic static-kinetic friction rM= 0.7
model. If µs<µk_lim with a moderate x& k -value, this model rM= 0.8
approaches a typical textile-physics friction model rM= 0.9
characterized by a kinetic friction increasing with speed. This
is this model we privilege in our study because, on the one
hand, we think it is able to approach the dynamic behaviour of Time (s)
natural muscle [5] and, on the other hand, it makes possible to (a)
simply modelize the dynamic behaviour of textile-braided
pneumatic McKibben muscle, as we will show it in section IV. rM= 0
rM= 0.1
rM= 0.2
rM= 0.3

X-Position (cm)
rM= 0.4
Friction c oefficient

rM= 0.5
rM= 0.6
Textile-physic s inspired
kinetic friction rM= 0.7
rM= 0.8

Typic al solid static-kinetic fric tion

Velocity (m/s)
Figure 1. Typical non-linear friction model corresponding to (3) and particular
case of textile-physics inspired kinetic friction considered in the paper.
Let us call m the muscle weight in movement during
contraction and let us consider a given load M driven by the
muscle as we will experimentally test it in section IV (see Fig.
5). Moreover we consider that the control signal u is
transmitted to the artificial muscle through a first order linear
system with a time constant noted T. As a consequence, the
open-loop control of the muscle contraction can be written as
follows:
(1 − e −t / T )uFmax [1 − ( x / xmax )] − Fdamp ( x& ) − Mg = ( M + m) &x& (4)
Let us introduce the following notation: rm=mg/Fmax,
rM=Mg/Fmax and rdamp=Fdamp/Fmax. Equation (4) can be
rewritten as follows:
(1 − e −t / T )u[1 − ( x / xmax )] − rdamp ( x& ) − rM = (rm + rM )( &x& / g ) (5)
We give in Fig. 2 the simulated result of a unit-u step response
for various loads – i.e. a various rM-factor between 0 and 1 –
for the two considered linear and non-linear friction models
with the following parameters: rM=0.1, fv/Fmax=0.5 Ns/m in the
linear case, µs/Fmax=0.1, µk_lim/Fmax=1, x& s = 0.5m / s in the
non-linear case.
Time (s)
(b)
Figure 2. 0pen-loop contraction simulation of artificial muscle model damped
with linear viscous (a) or non-linear kinetic friction model (b) – see text.
While in the linear case, inside the rM-range [0-0.9] the 95%
response time increases with load from about 0.2 to 1 s with
an overshooting reaching 40%, in the non-linear case no
overshooting occurs and the 95% response time only varies
between 0.51 and 0.58 s. A true load-robustness results from
this non-linear damping friction model. We even think that
this form of load-insensitivity is peculiar to skeletal muscle.
The bio-mimetic character of this non-linear friction model
can be estimated by comparison with the so-called Hill’s
model obtained in quick-release conditions – in our simulated
model this condition is simply obtained by omitting the first-
order signal transmitter. Let us recall the normalized form of
Hill’s equation as follows:
Mg a V a Mg a
( + )( + ) = (1 − ) (6)
Fmax Fmax Vmax Fmax Fmax Fmax
where Fmax is always the isometric force at zero-contraction
ratio, V is the maximum velocity during free contraction of the
muscle driving its load M, and Vmax the maximum velocity for
a zero-load. The parameter (a/Fmax) characterizes the curvature
of Hill’s hyperbolic curve; its typical value for skeletal muscle
is in the range 0.12-0.41 [6]. We give in Fig.3 the Hill’s

719
curves deduced from our two simulated friction models: while
the curve is almost a straight-line in the linear viscous friction k=
I 200
case with (a/Fmax) ≈ 0.8, in the non-linear friction case the k=
I 100
corresponding curve with a (a/Fmax) ≈ 0.35 belongs to the k=
I 50
physiological range . k=
I 20

X-position (cm)
Quic k-release data and approac hed k=
I 10
veloc ity-forc e relation with (a/Fmax)= 0.8
in linear visc ous fric tion c ase k=
I 5
Quic k-release data and approac hed k=
I 4
veloc ity-forc e relation with (a/Fmax)= 0.35
V/Vm ax-ratio

in non-linear kinetic fric tion c ase

Time (s)
(a)

rM= 0.02
rM= 0.05
Ratio rM= Mg/Fm ax
Figure 3. Comparison of Hill’s curves derived from our muscle model with rM= 0.1
linear viscous friction model and non-linear kinetic friction model (see text).
X-Position (c m) rM= 0.2
We will check in section IV the relevance of the non-linear rM= 0.25
friction model to capture typical McKibben artificial muscle
open-loop response and the possibility given by our closed-
loop controller to preserve this robust damping. rM= 0.3

B. Robust and accurate closed-loop position control with a

single integral action
The fundamental idea of our closed-loop controller is based
on the combination of stiffness and natural damping properties
of the artificial muscle with a simple integrator of kI -parameter Time (s)
able to generate the accurate closed-loop positioning. Let us (b)
consider a desired xd-position (constant or variable). By
substituting the corresponding closed-loop u-control into (5) rM= 0.075
we get:
t rM= 0.1

∫
−t / T
k I ( ( xd − x)dt )(1 − e )[1 − ( x / xmax )] − rdamp ( x& ) − rM
(7)
X-Position (cm)

0 rM= 0.2 rM= 0.25

= (rm + rM )( &x& / g )
rM= 0.15
Let us derive one time with respect to time; we get:
t
1 x x&
0
∫
k I ( xd − x)dt[ e −t / T (1 −
T xmax
) − (1 − e −t / T )
xmax
]
(8)
−t / T x drdamp &x&&
+ k I (1 − e )(1 − )( xd − x) − = (rm + rM )
xmax dt g
Let us assume that the closed-loop system is stable: when t
tends to infinite, x tends to some x∞ – with all derivatives equal Time (s)
to zero – given by following equation: (c)
x Figure 4. Simulation of the closed-loop control of the muscle model with a
k I ( xd − x∞ )(1 − ∞ ) = 0 (9) constant gain kI -single integral action for a 7cm-position step, (a) Effect of kI –
xmax variation in the case of the previously considered linear viscous friction model,
(b) Effect of load variation in the linear viscous friction case for kI =10 m-1s-1,
i.e. x∞ = xmax or x∞ = xd The first equilibrium position (c) Attempt to simulate the non-linear kinetic friction case (see text).
corresponds to the full contraction of the muscle in which no
xd=7cm position step responses for various loads in the two
force is generated, the second one is this resulting from closed-
cases of friction model as previously parametrized. In Fig. 4.a
loop control. We give in Fig. 4 the simulation of closed-loop

720
and 4.b the linear friction model is considered: an optimal
kI=10 m-1s-1 value is empirically determined in Fig. 4.a for
rM=0.1 value while Fig. 4.b shows the effects of rM-variations
for this constant kI -value. In Fig. 4.c the non-linear friction
model is considered with constant kI=18 m-1s-1. Let us note that
although all our efforts in differential equation programming
the convergence to the desired position was generally not
achieved. We will check it further in experimental conditions
(section IV). We can however remark the absence of
overshooting during simulated contraction whatever the load.
III. CLOSED-LOOP STABILITY ANALYSIS
From closed-loop system analysis developed in section II,
the desired xd-position is the alone equilibrium point which
moreover appears stable in reported simulations. In order to
better understand the closed-loop stability conditions we
propose to apply to it a classic linearization around this
equilibrium point. We will limit in a first step our analysis to
the linear viscous friction case. Moreover, we consider that in
the close neighborhood of the equilibrium point no delay-effect
due to the control transmission has to be considered. We note
rv=fv/Fmax. From (5) we derive:
(du / dt )[1 − ( x / xmax )] − u ( x / xmax ) − rv &x& = (rm + rM )&x&& / g (10)
Let us define the state variables as follows:
x1 = &x& , x2 = x& and x3 = x − xd . As a consequence the
linearization will be realized around a zero-equilibrium point
x1d= x2d=x3d=0 in such a way that x1= x1d+ε1, x2= x2d+ε2, x3=
x3d+ε3 . Let us define the following integral term Int(x3):
t t
∫ ∫
Int ( x3 ) = ( xd − x)dt = − x3dt (11)
0 0
corresponding to the integration of the position-error between
initial state at zero-time and current state x3(t). From (10) the
following state representation is deduced in which the term in
x32 corresponding to a ε 32 -term was neglected:
 g k I Int ( x3 ) x corresponding to initial slope of our non-linear friction model
 x&1 = ( r + r )[− rv x1 − x x2 − k I (1 − d ) x3
x equal from (16) to 3.6.
 m M max max
 x& 2 = x1 (12)
 x& = x
 3 2 us, our intuition to privilege a single integral action closed-loop
 controller. We now apply this controller to the position control
In a classic way, we can deduce the matrix relationship
ε& = Jε in which ε = [ε1 ε 2 ε 3 ]T and the ‘characteristic
polynomial’ corresponding to det( J − λI 3 ) = 0 where I 3 is the
3 × 3 unit-matrix and λ a complex variable. We get:
λ3 + rv λ2 + (k I Int ( x3 ) / xmax )λ + k I [1 − ( xd / xmax )]) = 0 (13)
Analyzing the system stability from this equation has however
a meaning only if all coefficients are constant. This can be
made from a simple physical interpretation of Int(x3): let us
assume that the system transitory state takes a time td to put the
system from its initial position to the neighborhood of xd with
the ε-accuracy, and that this time is long enough in order that
its change resulting from the ε–vector is negligible. Let us note
Int(xd) this corresponding almost-constant value of Int(x3). It is
721
now possible to apply to (13) the classic Routh-Hurwitz
stability criteria peculiar to a third order system in the form
λ3 + Aλ2 + Bλ + C = 0 : the system is stable if and only if A>0,
B>0, C>0 and AB>C. In our case these conditions can be
gathered in the following relationship:
Int ( xd ) > ( xmax − xd ) / rv (14)
which is always verified if:
Int ( xd ) > xmax / rv (15)
This is a surprising stability condition in which kI does not
explicitly appear, for which we propose the following
interpretation; first of all let us emphasize the fact that Int(xd) is
obligatory positive due to the definition of the u-muscle control
belonging to the range [0-1]; secondly, Int(xd) implicitly
depends on the single kI-term control: lower will be kI, higher
will be Int(xd) since the u-muscle control is proportional to kI.
As a consequence, for a given muscle specified by its three
parameters (xmax, Fmax, fv) one can reasonably think to be able to
experimentally determine a maximum kI-value verifying (15)
and so the closed-loop system would be stable whatever the xd-
value. Moreover, if this kI-limit corresponds to the lower
considered load, it can also be thought that a higher load would
favor, for the same kI-value, the stability by increasing Int(xd).
Lastly, the delay induced by the control transmission – at least
under its linear first order considered form – appears as a
stability factor. What happens now in the case of the non-linear
kinetic friction model? A simple reasoning consists to
substitute to the constant viscous coefficient fv the slope of the
non-linear friction model at zero-velocity:
( µ k _ lim − µ s )
dFNL − damp
( x& = 0) = (16)
dx& x& k
In particular, a textile-inspired friction model appears as a
stability factor since its slope is maximal at zero-velocity. For
example, in simulations reported in first section a relatively
high ratio rv of 0.5 was considered to be compared for closed-
loop step responses with similar response times to the ratio
Although our stability analysis is not able to give explicit
conditions of stability for the kI-term, it justifies, according to
of a classic McKibben artificial muscle.
IV. APPLICATION TO ROBUST AND ACCURATE POSITIONING
OF MCKIBBEN PNEUMATIC MUSCLE
We consider a single pneumatic artificial muscle designed
at the laboratory and tested on the experimental set-up shown
in Fig. 5: at the muscle fixed tip, the pressurized air is
controlled by the intermediate of a SAMSON
Intensity/Pressure converter while the muscle free tip can lift a
given load. The muscle is made of a thin butyl rubber inner
tube surrounded by a rayon-braided weave. Its active initial
length is about 28cm. In order to limit the non-linear effects
due to the I/P converter working pressure was restrained in the
[0-3bar] range. At 3 bar we get a maximum force of about
50dN and a maximum contraction length equal to about 11cm.
 M= 0.2, 0.5, 1, 3, 5 kg
8 kg
10 kg
12 kg
15 kg

X-position (cm)
18 kg
20 kg

25 kg

Figure 5. Experimental set-up for open-and-closed loop position control of a Time (s)
pneumatic McKibben artificial muscle (see text).
(a)
We will not try to modelize the dynamic behaviour of
McKibben muscle – see, for example, our recent study [7] and 1 kg
associated references. However in order to justify our non-
linear friction model inspired by textile physics in the 10 kg
understanding of McKibben muscle damping, we developed a

simple comparison between our own specimen controlled in
open-loop at 3 bar for various loads (Fig. 6.a) and the model
proposed in section 1 with following parameters: Fmax=50dN,
xmax=0.11m, µs=4dN, µk_lim=40dN, x& k =0.6m/s, T=0.1s (a pure
delay of 0.05s was also added) and m=50g. As it can be seen in
Fig. 6.b although the model is not able to capture the full non-
linear character of the actuator, a relative good concordance
between the model and the real muscle is obtained with an
accuracy better than 10% all along the dynamic contraction.
In a second stage, we tested our single integrator-controller
sampled at 10ms. We show in Fig. 7 the experimental result for
step responses between x=2cm and x=9cm, corresponding to a
large step, and for step responses between x=3cm and x=7cm
corresponding to a more limited step. In both cases a similar
value of kI has been chosen – equal to 0.0075 bar.m-1s-1. During
the large step ascending motion, the real position never
overshoots the desired one with a 95% response time between
about 0.9s and 1.9s (Fig. 7.a); during the middle-range
ascending motion, overshooting of the desired position is
limited to less than 5% with a 95% response time between 0.6s
and 1.3s (Fig. 7.b). It is worthy to note that in both cases,
during the descending motion, due to the single effect mode of
the artificial muscle – its obligatory positive control variable
corresponds to a simple contraction – the I-controller only
becomes active after the desired position. An overshooting
results however quickly reduced; the first peak could even be
reduced with a smaller kI-gain however not adapted to a quick
response ‘against gravity’, suggesting the interest of some
adaptive approach with respect to motion sense as mentioned
in conclusion. The tracking of a sinus-wave was also tested as
shown in Fig. 8.a with a constant load of 10kg moving from a
lower 2cm to an upper 9cm x-position alternatively with and
against gravity and a constant kI-gain equal to 0.015 bar.m-1s-1:
the tracking is relatively good with a maximum delay of about
0.8s. In a last experiment, we tested the ability of the controller
to reject a manual perturbation: during the sinus-wave tracking
the operator manually caught the load when it was passing
X-position (cm)
15 kg
20 kg
model
real
Time (s)
(b)
Figure 6. Justification of a textile-physics inspired friction model for explaining
the McKibben artificial muscle damping by means of a comparison between
real muscle open-loop step responses performed at 3 bar (a) and section 1
muscle model including the non-linear kinetic friction model (b).
at the lower position and released it after some seconds. It can
be checked in Fig. 8.b that no instability occurred although a
brutal deviation from the desired trajectory, and that the real
trajectory rapidly converges again on the desired one.
V. CONCLUSION
To some extent we validated in our study the possibility to
control non-linear artificial muscles thanks to a single integral
action. Our theoretical stability analysis is limited and must be
extended but it suggests, for a given muscle, roughly
characterized by its maximum contraction length, its
maximum isometric force and its zero-velocity friction
coefficient, that a maximum kI-parameter can be
experimentally determined. Simulations even suggest a larger
stability domain. The results reported with a single McKibben
artificial muscle show the practical relevance of the controller
both for step and tracking responses with a real robustness to
load variations as to manual external perturbations.

722
 Real traj. for
desired M= 1,2,5,
sinus. traj. 10,12.5 kg
M= 1,2,3,
4,5,7,10
X-position (cm)

X-position (cm)
12,15 kg

M= 1,2,3,
4,5,7,10
12,15 kg

Time (s) Time (s)

(a) (a)

desired Real
sinus. traj. trajec tory
M= 1,2,3,
4,5,7,10

X-position (c m)
X-p osition (c m )

12,15 kg

M= 1,2,3,
4,5,7,10
12,15 kg Start of
manual
perturbation

Time (s) End of manual

Time (s) perturbation
(b) (b)
Figure 7. Experimental closed-loop step response of our McKibben muscle for
Figure 8. Experimental tracking of a sinus-wave with a constant 10kg-load (a)
various loads in two cases of initial and final positions (see text).
and effect of a manual perturbation during the same tracking (b).

In the particular case of the McKibben artificial muscle, we REFERENCES

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braided fluidic artificial muscles, the advantage of a single
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