Modeling and Grasping control for Manipulators Driven by Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

Abstract

Safety is essential as artificial hands have contact with people. We consider a pneumatic drive manipulator that can give flexibility to the structure itself. While pneumatic drive has the advantage of high compliance, it also has disadvantages of low control accuracy and large error. It makes it possible to hold the object in a balanced manner or to handle it manually unconsciously when these features work well. So, we first modeled static characteristic model of pneumatic artificial muscles, and next defined the driving model of the manipulator, and finally considered the potential due to the joint stiffness stored in the manipulator. In this way, we have constructed the equation of motion of manipulators considering flexibility. The effectiveness of modeling is verified by comparing experimental and simulation results. In addition, we confirmed that the manipulator grasps using the flexibility by performing object grasping control.