• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
• /
• v.6 no.6
• /
• pp.894-903
• /
• 2008

In this paper, we present an artificial muscle actuator producing rectilinear motion, called the Tube-Spring-Actuator(TSA). The TSA is supposed to be a prospective substitute in areas requiring macro forces such as robotics. It is simply configured from a synthetic elastomer tube with an inserted spring. The design of the TSA is described in detail and its analysis is conducted to investigate the characteristics of the actuator based on the derived model. In addition, the performance of the proposed actuator is tested via experiments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2005.06a
• /
• pp.927-931
• /
• 2005

Carbon nanotube actuator, working under physical conditions (in aqueous solution) and converting electrical energy into mechanical energy directly, can be a good substitute for artificial muscle. The carbon nanotube actuator simulated in this paper is an isotropic cantilever type with an adhesive tape which is sandwiched between two single-walled carbon nanotubes. For predicting the static and dynamic characteristic parameters, the analytical model for a 3 layer bimorph carbon nanotube actuator is developed by using Euler-Bernoulli beam theory. The governing equation and boundary conditions are derived from energy principles. The induced displacements of the theoretical model are presented in order to investigate the performance of the carbon nanotube actuator with different control voltages. The developed model presents invaluable means for designing and predicting the performance of carbon nanotube actuator that can be used in artificial muscle applications.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.14 no.5
• /
• pp.100-107
• /
• 1997

A pneumatic artificial muscle type of actuator, which acts similar to human muscle, is developed recently. In this paper, an adaptive controller is presented for the trajectory tracking problem of a two-degree- of-freedom manipulator using two pairs of pneumatic artificial muscle actuators. Due to the nonlinearity and the uncertainty on the dynamics of the actuator, it is difficult to make the effective control schemes of this system. By the adaptive control law which inclueds a nonlinear "feedforward" term compensating paramet- ric uncertainties in addition to P.I.D. scheme, both golbal stability of the system and convergence of the tracking error are guaranted. The effectiveness of the proposed control method for the manipulator using this actuator is illustrated through experiments.periments.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 1997.10a
• /
• pp.1704-1707
• /
• 1997

In this work, position and vibratiion control of a two-link manipulator with one flexible link, which an unkoun but bounded payload mass and two pair of artificial muscle-type penumatic actuators, are investgated. A flexible link robot has advantages over a figid link robot in the sense that it is much safer when it cones into contact with its environment, including humans. Furthermore, for the sake of safety, it would be more desirabel if an actuator could deliver required force while maintaining proper compliance. An artificial muscle-type penumatic actuator is adequate for such cases. In this study, a controller based on singular perturbation method, adaptive and sliding mode contro, and .mu.-synthesis is developed. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is confirmed through simulations and experiments.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.20 no.6
• /
• pp.1882-1892
• /
• 1996

This paper is concerned with the position control of the ond degree-of freedom manipulator using pneumatic artificial muscle actuator which is built to have a proper compliance. For t his pneumatic artificial muscle actuator though, it is difficult to make an effective control scheme due to the nonlinearity and uncertainties on the dynamics of the actuator. In this paper, a third-order equation of motion is derived for the actuator including the dynamics of the pneumatic servovalve. Later, various modeling uncertainties due to the nonlinearity and unmodeled dynamics of the servo vlave and the actuator are taken care of, as a trade-off between the closed-loop performance of the controlled system and its robustness to uncertainties. A controller using .mu. synthesis thchnique is designed, and robust performance against measurement noise, various modeling uncertainties due to the dynamics of the servo valve and actuator is achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed control methods is illustrated through simulations and experiments.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
• /
• v.28 no.11
• /
• pp.1234-1241
• /
• 2011

In this work the potential, and the perspectives of the dielectric elastomer actuator are overviewed briefly. As an exemplary work, we introduce a novel contractile artificial muscle actuator based on Synthetic Elastomer(SE). SE is the name of new dielectric elastomer material we have developed and its synthesis procedures and evaluations are described in the first. The contractile artificial muscle actuator is made by stacking the actuator unit one by one along the in thickness direction and finished up by bonding the multi-stacked actuator. Its possibility for the robotic actuator is discussed and demonstrated via experiments.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2005.10a
• /
• pp.641-644
• /
• 2005

The aim of this research is to evaluate the relationship between the total effective moment $(M^E)$ and Bemoulli-Euler bending moment (M) when the ply orientations of UD CFRP in Piezoelectric Zirconate Titanate Composite Actuator (PZTCA) are changed. The obtained results as follows. Firstly, as the performance test results by the CFRP ply orientation, the performance of [0] and [90] were stable. However, while the performance of [+45] was suddenly decreased after 5 hours. Secondly, the change of $M^E$ by the CFRP ply orientation was evaluated. As the CFRP ply orientation was increased from [0] to [+60], the $M^E$ were gradually decreased. However, they became a little bit increased from [+60] to [90]. Finally, after the change of M by the CFRP ply orientation was evaluated, it was found that $M^E=2.2M$ was valid for just [0] and that there was a relationship between $M^E$ and M according to the ply orientation.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.20 no.10
• /
• pp.3186-3198
• /
• 1996

When a robot is to have contact with its enviornment, such as a medi-care robot, it would be advantageous for the robot to have a high compliance. For this reason, a robot having not only a flexible link but also an actuator with compliance, is desirable. This paper is concerned with the position and vibration control of 1 degree of freedom flexible robot using a pneumatic artificial muscle actuator. The dynamics of the manipulator assumed to be and Euler-Bernoulli beam are derived on the basis of the linear mathematical modle. Although this pneumatic artifical muscle actuator has many merits for the compliance robot, it is difficult to make an effective control scheme of this system because of ths nonlinearity and uncertainty on the dynamics of the actuator. By designing a controller using .mu.-synthesis, robust performance against measurement noise, various modeling uncertainties on the dynamics of the servo valve, actuator and mainpulator, is achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed control method is illustrated through simulations and experiments.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2005.06a
• /
• pp.1983-1989
• /
• 2005

Industrial robots are powerful, extremely accurate multi-jointed systems, but they are heavy and highly rigid because of their mechanical structure and motorization. Therefore, sharing the robot working space with its environment is problematic. A novel pneumatic artificial muscle actuator (PAM actuator) has been regarded during the recent decades as an interesting alternative to hydraulic and electric actuators. Its main advantages are high strength and high power/weight ratio, low cost, compactness, ease of maintenance, cleanliness, readily available and cheap power source, inherent safety and mobility assistance to humans performing tasks. The PAM is undoubtedly the most promising artificial muscle for the actuation of new types of industrial robots such as Rubber Actuator and PAM manipulators. However, some limitations still exist, such as the air compressibility and the lack of damping ability of the actuator bring the dynamic delay of the pressure response and cause the oscillatory motion. In addition, the nonlinearities in the PAM manipulator still limit the controllability. Therefore, it is not easy to realize motion with high accuracy and high speed and with respect to various external inertia loads in order to realize a human-friendly therapy robot To overcome these problems a novel controller, which harmonizes a phase plane switching control method with conventional PID controller and the adaptabilities of neural network, is newly proposed. In order to realize satisfactory control performance a variable damper - Magneto-Rheological Brake (MRB) is equipped to the joint of the manipulator. Superb mixture of conventional PID controller and a phase plane switching control using neural network brings us a novel controller. This proposed controller is appropriate for a kind of plants with nonlinearity uncertainties and disturbances. The experiments were carried out in practical PAM manipulator and the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm was demonstrated through experiments, which had proved that the stability of the manipulator can be improved greatly in a high gain control by using MRB with phase plane switching control using neural network and without regard for the changes of external inertia loads.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.348-354
• /
• 2007

Polymer actuators, which are also called as smart materials, change their shapes when electrical, chemical, thermal, or magnetic energy is applied to them and are useful in wide variety of applications such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), machine components, and artificial muscles. For this study, Polyaniline/carbon-nanotube polymer actuator that is one of electroactive polymer actuators was prepared. Since the nonlinear phenomena of hysteresis and a step response are essential considerations for practical use of polymer actuators, we have investigated the movement of the Polyaniline/carbon-nanotube polymer actuator and have developed an integrated model that can be used for simulating and predicting the hysteresis and a step response during actuation. The Preisach hysteresis model, one of the most popular phenomenological models of hysteresis, were used for describing the hysteretic behavior of Polyaniline/carbon-nanotube polymer actuator while the ARX method, one of system identification techniques, were used for modeling a step response. In this paper, we first expain details in preparation of the Polyaniline/carbon-nanotube polymer then present the mathematical description of our model, the extraction of the parameters, simulation results from the model, and finally a comparison with measured data.