• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.102-113
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• 1996

An experimental and theoretical study on a pneumatic servo system has been conducted using on-off valves and a pneumatic cylinder. A V/I converter has been designed for rapid rising and falling of the solenoid current, which significantly improves the positioning accuracy and settling time of the servo system by shortening the valve opening time. Pulse width modulation was modified to operate on-off valves effectively. A state feedback controller which feeds back position, velocity and acceleration is used to control the system. The influence of controller gains on the system performance is studied to develop a scheme that automatically adjusts the gains using fuzzy logic theory. It is shown experimentally that the proposed fuzzy logic tuner works satisfactorily. A new method for measurements of valve effective areas is proposed, and a partially polytropic model is applied to simulation of the pneumatic system. Simulated results show good agreement with experimental data.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.1619-1625
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• 1997

This paper concerns a 2-axis PR type pneumatic manipulator system translating in vertical and rotating in horizontal directions. A simplified linear model is mathematically formulated similar to the pneumatic acturators in dynamic responses in order to devise an appropriate position control scheme. A PD controller preceding the on/off solenoid valve turns out not only economical but also effective in reducing rise time and amplitude of limit cycles, if its control gains are determined on the basis of frequency response. And, additional implementation of symmetric or asymmetric deadband at the PD controller output greatly helps minimize valve opening numbers, positional error, and undesirable direction-dependent property due to the gravitational load. Such a control concept is synthesized through numerical simulations and next applied to the experimental set-up, featuring enhanced positional servo characteristics.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2003.06a
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• pp.1012-1017
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• 2003

The development of a fast, accurate, and inexpensive position-controlled pneumatic actuator that may be applied to a variety of practical positioning applications with various external loads is described in this paper. A novel modified pulso width modulation (MPWM) valve pulsing algorithm allows on/off solenoid valves to be used in place of costly servo valves. A comparison between the system response of standard PWM technique and that of the novel modified PWM technique shows that the control performance is significantly increased. A state feedback controller with position, velocity and acceleration feedback is successfully implemented as the continuous controller. Switching algorithm of control parameter using learning vector quantization neural network (LVQNN) is newly proposed. which estimates the external loads of the pneumatic actuator. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithms are demonstrated through experiments with various loads.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.619-620
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• 2012

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.4742-4748
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• 2014

A semi-automatic clutch was developed for drivers of vehicles with manual transmission. The clutch is operated by pressing a switch on the gear stick without stepping on a clutch pedal when the driver wants to shift gears. To automatic control a clutch, driving information is provided by sensors installed under the vehicle. On the other hand, sensors are prone to failure under severe driving conditions and a long time is needed to install or repair these sensors in the vehicle. In this paper, a semi-automatic clutch that received driving information by CAN communication from the ECU was developed and a pneumatic actuator was used to operate the clutch. The semi-automatic clutch by a pneumatic cylinder was operated with a supply air pressure of more than 3bar.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.1882-1892
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• 1996

This paper is concerned with the position control of the ond degree-of freedom manipulator using pneumatic artificial muscle actuator which is built to have a proper compliance. For t his pneumatic artificial muscle actuator though, it is difficult to make an effective control scheme due to the nonlinearity and uncertainties on the dynamics of the actuator. In this paper, a third-order equation of motion is derived for the actuator including the dynamics of the pneumatic servovalve. Later, various modeling uncertainties due to the nonlinearity and unmodeled dynamics of the servo vlave and the actuator are taken care of, as a trade-off between the closed-loop performance of the controlled system and its robustness to uncertainties. A controller using .mu. synthesis thchnique is designed, and robust performance against measurement noise, various modeling uncertainties due to the dynamics of the servo valve and actuator is achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed control methods is illustrated through simulations and experiments.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.37 no.12
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• pp.1521-1527
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• 2013

This study proposes a wearable master device that can measure the joint stiffness and the angular displacement of a human operator to enhance the adapting capability of a slave system. A lightweight inertial sensor and the exoskeleton mechanism of the master device can make an operator feel comfortable, and artificial pneumatic muscles having a working principle similar to that of human muscles improve the performance of the slave device on emulating what a human operator does. Experimental results revealed that the proposed master/slave system based on the muscle stiffness sensor yielded uniform tracking performance compared with a conventional position-feedback controller when the payload applied to the slave system changed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.109-116
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• 1998

This paper is concerned with effective operating method of pneumatic on-off valves for improving position control accuracy, valve life-time and position settling time using modified pulse width modulation with dead-zone (MPWMD). The pneumatic system using on-off valves has advantage of simple construction and low cost compared with a system with servo-valves. The performance of the proposed control method is investigated experimentally for the position control of a pneumatic cylinder using on-off valves. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm for valve operation can be used to obtain fast and accurate position control compared to the conventional PWMD algorithm. It is also shown that the use of the proposed MPWMD algorithm for the position control significantly reduces the number of valve switching and noise.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.41 no.8
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• pp.771-782
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• 2017

This paper describes the development of a wearable robot to assist ankle power for the elderly. Previously developed wearable robots have generally used motors and gears to assist muscle power during walking. However, the combination of motor and reduction gear is heavy and has limitations on the simultaneous control of stiffness and torque due to the friction of the gear reducer unlike human muscles. Therefore, in this study, Mckibben pneumatic muscle, which is lighter, safer, and more powerful than an electric motor with gear, was used to assist ankle joint. Antagonistic actuation using a pair of pneumatic muscles assisted the power of the soleus muscles and tibialis anterior muscles used for the pitching motion of the ankle joint, and the model parameters of the antagonistic actuator were experimentally derived using a muscle test platform. To recognize the wearer's walking intention, foot load and ankle torque were calculated by measuring the pressure and the center of pressure of the foot using force and linear displacement sensors, and the stiffness and the torque of the pneumatic muscle joint were then controlled by the calculated ankle torque and foot load. Finally, the performance of the developed ankle power assistive robot was experimentally verified by measuring EMG signals during walking experiments on a treadmill.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.90-96
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• 2008

A pneumatic system was proposed to evaluate displacement accuracy of the pneumatic actuator without external load and to analyze capability of integration of the proposed valve system. The proposed pneumatic system consisted of a combination of pneumatic valves, two proximity sensors, and a programmable logic controller(PLC). The position controller is based on the PLC controller connected with the proximity sensors. Displacement accuracy of the pneumatic cylinder stroke was tested by varying air pressures of the supply and discharge-side and strokes of the pneumatic cylinder. The displacement accuracy of the pneumatic cylinder stroke increased as the supply and discharge side of air pressure increased at the stroke length of 133mm. Also the displacement accuracy increased as the stroke length increased with a fixed supply and discharge side of air pressure of the pneumatic cylinder as 3.5 and $4.5kg/cm^2$, respectively. The most accurate displacement of the pneumatic cylinder(i.e., standard deviation of 0.01 mm) was obtained at the supply and discharge side of air pressure of 4.0 and $5.0kg/cm^2$, respectively, and strokes of 170 and 190 mm among arbitrarily selected supply and discharge side air pressures and strokes.