Improvement of Pneumatic Football Kicking Device Based on Imitation of Human Dynamics

Imitation of the explosive human dynamics has been proven challenging to replicate with mechanical devices. Kicking movements can be created by a device where the motions are replicated with fluidic muscles. The goal with this research is to improve the usability and dynamics of the football kicking device to meet the speed and accuracy of the football to match a human kick. The research platform is a football penalty kick training device, able to perform a kick with adjustable speed and direction. The mechanical structure of the kicking element was built to resemble a human leg. Improvements were achieved in speed, accuracy, reliability and usability. This study shows that human dynamics can be imitated to some extent by using fluidic muscles.