Modeling and System Integration for a Thin Pneumatic Rubber 3-DOF Actuator
Shuhei Kawamura,
Mizuki Sudani,
Mingcong Deng,
Yuichi Noge,
Shuichi Wakimoto
Affiliations
Shuhei Kawamura
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 2-24-16 Nakacho, Koganei-shi, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan
Mizuki Sudani
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 2-24-16 Nakacho, Koganei-shi, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan
Mingcong Deng
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 2-24-16 Nakacho, Koganei-shi, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan
Yuichi Noge
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 2-24-16 Nakacho, Koganei-shi, Tokyo 184-8588, Japan
Shuichi Wakimoto
Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, 3-1-1 Tsushima-naka, Kita-ku, Okayama 700-8530, Japan
Recently, soft actuators have been getting increased attention within various fields. The actuators are composed of flexible materials and driven by pneumatic pressure. A thin pneumatic rubber actuator generating 3 degrees of freedom motion, called 3-DOF micro-hand, has small diameter McKibben artificial muscles which generate a contraction force in the axial direction. By this structure, the micro-hand contracts in the longitudinal direction and bends in any direction by changing the applied air pressure pattern to the artificial muscles. The input–output relation of the micro-hand, however, is complicated and has not been modeled. In this paper, modeling for 3-DOF micro-hand is proposed. Moreover, the experimental system is built for the micro-hand and the proposed model is evaluated by using the experimental results.