Description
The topic of human-robot collaboration has become an important part of research in recent years. With suitable sensors and intelligent software, the workspace of man and robot is moving ever closer together. Another possibility is the use of soft material robots for the human-robot collaboration. However, the nonlinear material behavior complicate the control of the robots. In this paper, the low-level control of soft pneumatic actuators is researched. Therefore, a test bench for the low-level control is developed. The components of the test bench like the valve, the tubes and the actuator are modeled. Unknown parameters of the model are identified with the particle swarm optimization. Thus, a simulation model in addition to the test bench is built. With the simulation and the test bench, it is possible to investigate control strategies with focus on robustness due to leakage and parameter change. To illustrate this, a linear control strategy is implemented and tested.
