Robot Arm Analysis based on Master Device Pneumatic Actuators

Advances in technology have expanded the use of soft actuators in various fields especially in robotics, rehabilitation and medical field. Soft actuator development provides many advantages, primarily being simple structures, high power to weight ratio, good compliance, high water resistance and low production cost. However, most soft actuators suffer the problem of being oversized which could potentially hurt users as it is often made of hard materials such as steels and hard rigid plastics. Current drawbacks of soft actuator implementation in robotic arms are on its excessive weights, causing these robots to be difficult to set up by patients themselves which in turn makes it less applicable for home rehabilitation training program. Hence, there is a need to design a soft actuator which is safe and more flexible, especially for applications in areas of patients in rehabilitation area or in-house rehabilitation program. In this paper, we propose the design of robot arm using master device pneumatic actuator and analyse the implementation for the above purpose. The system comprises primarily of the master and slave arms, two accelerometers and two potentiometers providing references for attitude control, six quasi-servo valves, and SH-7125 microcontroller. Our proposed design exhibits functions of the actuator that has been generated from elastic deformation of extension and contraction of the cylinder structure when high pneumatic pressure is supplied to the chamber. The control performance of the device is investigated using simulation method, whereby the rational model of the robot arm and the quasi servo valve with the embedded controller is implemented and analysed. It is found that the analysed results of the model approved well with the desired values.

@article{Aliff2019,
  title     = {Robot Arm Analysis based on Master Device Pneumatic Actuators},
  journal   = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
  volume    = {10},
  number    = {8},
  year      = {2019},
  publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
  author    = {Mohd Aliff and Nor Samsiah Sani},
  doi       = {10.14569/IJACSA.2019.0100826},
  url       = {https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2019.0100826}
}