0000000000858305
AUTHOR
Eric J. Barth
Design and Characterization of a Miniature Hydraulic Power Supply for High-Bandwidth Control of Soft Robotics
Soft robotics holds enormous promise for a wide class of applications. However, system controllability, bandwidth, portability, and energy efficiency of soft robot power supplies are often inadequate. Soft robotics desperately needs improved solutions to drive soft actuators either pneumatically or hydraulically. This research paper offers a contribution to bridge this gap. It deals with small-scale power supplies for hydraulically-driven soft robots based on fluidic elastomer actuators in the power range 5-400 W. A design procedure for such power supplies is developed with an emphasis on high-bandwidth control. The performance requirements are established based on a literature survey, and …
Exploiting Valve Timing for Pneumatic Energy Savings
This research paper aims at addressing solutions that reduce air consumption in generic pneumatic systems used for pick-and-place operations. The investigation considers different system architectures both with a single control valve and two control valves arranged according to an independent metering configuration. Suitable control strategies are then proposed exploiting multiple timings to shut off the non-proportional switching valve(s). The resulting scenarios are experimentally evaluated on a dedicated test-bed. The main conclusion is that reduction of air consumption up to 73% is possible in comparison to the state-of-the-art layout for the reference application. Numerical simulations…