APPLICATION OF INTELLIGENT SWITCHING CONTROL OF PNEUMATIC ARTIFICIAL MUSCLE MANIPULATORS WITH MAGNETO-RHEOLOGICAL BRAKE

摘要

A pneumatic artificial muscle actuator (PAM actuator), has been regarded during the recent decades as an interesting alternative to hydraulic and electric actuators because of these advantages such as high power to weight ratio, low cost, readily available and cheap power source, inherent safety and mobility assistance to humans performing tasks. However, problems with the air compressibility and the lack of damping ability have made it difficult to realize motion with high accuracy, high speed and with respect to various external inertia loads in order to realize a human-friendly therapy robot (HFTR). An intelligent phase plane switching controller, which harmonizes a phase plane switching control (PPSC) algorithm, conventional PID controller and the adaptabilities of neural network, is newly proposed in this study. In order to realize satisfactory control performance, Magneto-Rheological Brake (MRB) is equipped to the joint of the manipulator. The experiments were carried out in practical PAM manipulator and the effectiveness of the newly proposed control algorithm was demonstrated through experiments, which proved that the stability of the manipulator could be improved greatly in a high gain control without regard to the change of external inertia loads.