We have developed an artificial finger which has a human tactile sensibility function, and is desired for some kinds of robots. This finger can recognizes some materials by only the actions of pressing and tracing an object actuated by the pneumatic cylinder. In general, there are many factors in recognizing the material, that is, “Surface condition”, “Hardness” and “Temperature” and they are used as input factors in the neural network in the study. This study also borrows from the action potential of humans. The action potential fires some impulses when a stimulus is applied to the skin. The human brain handles the impulse as input data. The advantage of inducing the impulse model in the artificial finger is to reduce the volume of calculation, and to handle the data of some sensors in parallel. Furthermore, we provided an artificial finger that has a finger joint. The pneumatic cylinder and the tendon actuate the joint to bend the finger. The purpose of making the finger joint is to improve the sensitivity for parameters and the effects are certified in this report.

抄録全体を表示

This research presents three-dimensional (3D) tube forming processes using a new hydraulic bending machine. The proposed bending machine uses a new method. When tube is fed into the fixed and active dies, it is bent by shifting the relative position of the active die. The bending shapes are controlled by the relative distance and orientation between the mobile die and the fixed die, and the length of the fed tube. The active die movement is controlled by six-degrees-of-freedom parallel kinematics with a hydraulic servo drive. This forming process has a big advantage. The change of the expected bending shape will require no change in the tooling system, but only a new control program for the motion of the active die and the length of the fed tube. Practical applications show that the bending machine can be applied to universal designed products with a 3D profile. Based on these bending processes, we also proposed a procedure to determine the controlling parameters of 3D tube forming processes. Experimental results show that the controlling parameters can be applied to square pipes with a helix shape. Until now this spiral process has been difficult to achieve using a conventional bending machine.

抄録全体を表示

Many industrial instruments use rubber; NBR (Nitrile Butadiene Rubber) is especially used for the packing attached to pneumatic equipment. Recently, with the spread of dry pneumatic pumps, the deterioration of NBR by ozone has become a serious problem. However, the process of ozone degradation of NBR has not been sufficiently clarified. In general, the evaluation method of the deterioration of NBR is identified in Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS). From a practical point of view, it is not enough to just observe crack behavior of test pieces, but it is also important to estimate the mechanical characteristics in real time. Therefore, we developed a degradation monitoring device using a pneumatic servo system with a nozzle-flapper, and evaluated the performance of the device. As a result, it was verified that the monitoring device can be used for tension measuring of NBR under a constant strain condition.

抄録全体を表示