氣壓撓性致動器應用於並聯式四軸人工手臂運動控制之設計研究

Development of a Artifical Flexible Arm Using Flexible Muscle Actuators

氣壓肌肉致動器是一種模仿人類肌肉特性的柔性致動器，具有取代人類實際肌肉的潛能，並可模擬真實肌肉的行為模式，故可運用在醫療操作、復健工程以及生物醫學等領域，目前在歐美及日本等先進國家中已有將撓性氣壓致動器應用於氣壓肌肉仿生機器人、氣壓仿生行走機械以及氣壓輔助復健醫療器材等領域之成功實例。然而這些研究面臨的主要問題是商用氣壓肌肉致動器成本較為昂貴，而且目前相關研究主題大都只探討一維自由度的動態行為模式。因此，本文除了將提出全新自製且具簡化及低成本之氣壓人工肌肉致動器之外，並將應用所開發之氣壓人工肌肉致動器具有可控軸向收縮的特性，進一步利用運動模型分析來建構一並聯式四軸撓性氣壓手臂。此外，本研究也具備兩項設計特色，其一是透過單一陀螺儀感測器來進行四支自製氣壓撓性致動器之個別閉迴路控制，其二是簡化利用2個比例方向閥來控制四支氣壓撓性致動器之氣壓壓力值，使其具有結構簡單、成本降低以及控制容易之特點，進而達到良好的定位效果。 In this paper, a new pneumatic artificial soft arm using pneumatic muscle actuator is developed. The pneumatic muscle actuator is a flexible silicone actuator which has been widely discussed and researched in recent years. It can simulate the real muscle motion. However, instead of the commercially available pneumatic muscle actuator, the utilized actuator is self-developed and constructed in the laboratory. The materials chosen for the construction of the actuator are low cost, easily available and durable. Moreover, to investigate the steady-state and dynamic performances of the axial contraction control of the newly developed 4-axis parallel pneumatic flexible arm, the closed-loop control scheme is applied. In addition, an inverse kinematic model for the 4-axis parallel pneumatic flexible arm is successfully developed. Finally, from experiment results, it is proved that not only the axial contraction control, but also the altitude control of the parallel 4-axis flexible arm using closed-loop control scheme are both satisfactory.

In this paper, a new pneumatic artificial soft arm using pneumatic muscle actuator is developed. The pneumatic muscle actuator is a flexible silicone actuator which has been widely discussed and researched in recent years. It can simulate the real muscle motion. However, instead of the commercially available pneumatic muscle actuator, the utilized actuator is self-developed and constructed in the laboratory. The materials chosen for the construction of the actuator are low cost, easily available and durable. Moreover, to investigate the steady-state and dynamic performances of the axial contraction control of the newly developed 4-axis parallel pneumatic flexible arm, the closed-loop control scheme is applied. In addition, an inverse kinematic model for the 4-axis parallel pneumatic flexible arm is successfully developed. Finally, from experiment results, it is proved that not only the axial contraction control, but also the altitude control of the parallel 4-axis flexible arm using closed-loop control scheme are both satisfactory.