抄録
In wearable pneumatic driving system, the small-sized and light-weight control valve and wearable actuator are important. Mostly, the total cost of control system depends on the cost of valves, because a popular industrial servo valve is very complex and expensive compared with a wearable actuator. The purpose of our study is to develop a small-sized and low-cost control valve that can be safe enough to be mounted on the human body. In our previous study, the low-cost servo valve using buckled tube was proposed and tested. However, the valve has relatively larger hysteresis in a relation between the motor rotational angle and output flow rate. In this paper, the improved servo valve with less hysteresis characteristics of output flow rate is proposed and tested. In addition, the configuration of the buckled tube on the valve is redesigned in order to reduce an overlap of the valve. Then, the improved valve is applied to the position control of the rubber artificial muscle. As a result, the position control performance of the muscle was also improved.
