Force control of motion teaching suit using serial-connected pneumatic artificial muscles for actuation and estimation.

Abstract

Machine - human interaction systems have been proposed to improve motion learning efficiency. We developed a pneumatic-driven motion teaching system that provides feedback to the learner by simultaneously presenting visual and torque information. We achieved a lightweight, soft, and user-safety haptic system using a pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM). The PAM's shrink force was estimated based on its characteristic model and the suit link system, and the suit generated external torque. However, accurate force control was challenging due to the time delay of the feedback control, the loosening of the soft suit, and modeling errors of the driving PAM caused by hysteresis. To improve the force control performance of the motion teaching suit, this article's contributions are to develop a novel suit in which PAMs for drive and force estimation are connected in series and implement a 2-degree-of-freedom (DOF) force control system using force estimation values in this suit and to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed hardware and software. This article contains three topics: (a) the development of novel suit hardware, (b) force estimation using a sealed small PAM, and (c) a proposal of force control using a 2-DOF controller. The effect of loosening the soft suit is reduced in the novel-developed suit. A sealed small PAM with small deformation and little hysteresis is adopted for force estimation. The time delay in feedback control is decreased by adopting the proposed novel 2-DOF control. Finally, the proposed suit and its control system were evaluated in experiments and achieved the desired performance.