TOWARDS A COMPACT ELECTRO-PNEUMATIC ACTUATED ARM FOR MOBILE ROBOTS

The design, control and the issues surrounding an electro-pneumatic actuated arm for mobile robots is presented. The design is a 3 degree-of-freedom arm incorporating a DC geared motor, a Festo DMSP fluidic muscle-spring... [ view full abstract ]

The design, control and the issues surrounding an electro-pneumatic actuated arm for mobile robots is presented. The design is a 3 degree-of-freedom arm incorporating a DC geared motor, a Festo DMSP fluidic muscle-spring couple, and a high torque servo motor. The main issues with conventional robotic arms are the need for high ratio transmissions and large joint torques caused by inherently bulky motors. The design presented in this paper greatly reduces the joint friction torque that contributes to the dangers associated with these traditional robot arms, with the use of compliant fluidic muscles. Reducing these dangers is desirable in mobile robot applications as the industry is becoming more focused on safe human-machine interaction and collaboration. A review of current state of the art research and design of arms incorporating fluidic muscles is presented. While these designs demonstrate great compliant behaviour, they are unpractical for use in mobile robotic applications due to the huge number of these actuators. A PI controller is utilised, taking in the joint angles of the arm as inputs. A number of tests are undertaken to benchmark the performance of the arm. The arm is capable of performing inverse kinematics and a user input of a position in x-y co-ordinates computes a set-point for the PI controller. The performance and controllability of the arm is analysed using the generated angle response data.