Design and hybrid control of the pneumatic force-feedback systems for Arm-Exoskeleton by using on/off valve

This article models a pneumatic force-feedback system consisting of the double-acting cylinder and a set of high-speed on–off valves, and its fuzzy controller in order to provide an insight into pneumatic system design and force-feedback control requirements of the Arm-Exoskeleton, which is applied in robot-teleoperation and robotics. In modeling, effects of nonlinear flow through the valves, air compressibility in cylinder chambers, and time delay and attenuation of the pressure input in the connecting tubes are considered. Based on this mathematical model, the hybrid fuzzy control method for the precise force-feedback control is proposed and the fuzzy controllers are realized with the Mega8 MCUs as the units of the distributed control system in the Arm-Exoskeleton. At last a series of experiments validated the models and control method.