3D mechanical characterization of artificial muscles with stereoscopic computer vision and active contours

Artificial muscles are formed by attaching a conducting polymeric film to a non-conducting one. Applying an electrical current on the muscle, a macroscopic bending movement appears on it. Study of curvature variations and related parameters, such as speed of motion or energy of curvature, is necessary for improving the efficiency of these devices. In a previous work, a one-cam computer vision system was developed to estimate motion parameters in 2D with precise results. In this paper, a two-cam stereo vision system is proposed to process the image sequence and track the muscle in 3D. Active contours models are employed in motion detection and mechanical parameters estimation. Results prove the validity of this approach, allowing automatic testing on the research into artificial muscles.