  This paper discusses and contests the claims of ``Soft Pneumatic Actuator
Fascicles for High Force and Reliability'' a research article which was
originally published in the March 2017 issue of the Journal Soft Robotics. The
original paper claims that the summed forces of multiple thin-walled extending
McKibben muscles are greater than a volumetrically equivalent actuator of the
same length at the same pressure. The original paper also claims that the
purported benefit becomes more pronounced as the number of smaller actuators is
increased. Using reasonable assumptions, the analysis of this paper shows that
the claims of the original paper violate the law of conservation of energy.
This paper also identifies errors in the original methodology that may have led
to the erroneous conclusions of the original paper. The goal of this paper is
to correct the record and to provide a more accurate framework for considering
fascicles used in soft pneumatic actuator packs.
