Development and Control Performance of Pneumatic Actuator Driven by Low Pressure

Recently, robot research that coexists with people and is helpful for them has been done. To coexist with people, it is necessary for robots to realize the same flexible motion as people. To grasp, a robot hand is required to control position accurately and treat the object flexibly. Additionally, when taking care of the elderly and patients, who are a typical example of personal service, safety and pliability are required because of much contact with people. Therefore, it is important to choose the proper materials, mechanics, drive systems, and control systems. Then, we propose pneumatic actuators as source of power of robot hand. But, to generate power, a past actuator needs a high compressed air. Then, in this research, a pneumatic actuator driven by low-pressure and low-volume is presented that is originally developed for driving a robot hand that works flexibly and is safer on the assumption of people contact. And this actuator is designed to get enough force to drive the hand in low-pressure. Because of the linear characteristics, this actuator can be easily controlled. And, the force control system that uses this actuator is constructed and the control performance to apply to the robot hand is examined. At the same time, five fingered robot hand using the pneumatic actuators is shown, and we show that the robot hand can do the same operation as man.