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Position Control of Flexible Pneumatic Cylinder Using Tiny Embedded Controller with Disturbance Observer

Wataru Kobayashi 1, Naoki Kato 1, Shujiro Dohta 1, Tetsuya Akagi 1, and Kazuhisa Ito 2
1. Department of Intelligent Mechanical Engineering, Okayama University of Science, Okayama, Japan
2. Department of Machinery and Control Systems, College of Systems Engineering and Science, Shibaura Institute of Technology, Saitama, Japan

Abstract—In the previous study, the flexible pneumatic cylinder was proposed and tested as a wearable actuator. The flexible robot arm using the cylinder for human wrist rehabilitation was also developed. In the next step, it is necessary to improve the control performance affected by disturbance such as a friction in a cylinder. In this paper, to realize a wearable, low-cost and robust control system, the position control system of the cylinder using a disturbance observer applied into the tiny embedded controller is proposed and tested. The position tracking control using the proposed system is carried out. As a result, it was confirmed that the proposed control scheme achieved 40% improvement of the mean absolute error in experiments.
 
Index Terms—flexible pneumatic cylinder, embedded controller, disturbance observer, position control

Cite: Wataru Kobayashi, Naoki Kato, Shujiro Dohta, Tetsuya Akagi, and Kazuhisa Ito, "Position Control of Flexible Pneumatic Cylinder Using Tiny Embedded Controller with Disturbance Observer," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 318-321, July 2017. DOI: 10.18178/ijmerr.6.4.318-321