Predictive Functional Control System for Stroke Control of a Pneumatic Tendon-driven Balloon Actuator

摘要

In recent years, Japanese society has been aging, engendering a labor shortage of young workers. Robots are therefore expected to be useful to perform tasks such as day-to-day work support for elderly people. Consequently, a tendon-driven balloon actuator has been developed for a robot hand in such environments. This study evaluated stroke control characteristics of a balloon actuator using a predictive functional control (PFC) system. Predictive functional control, a model based on predictive control (MPC) schemes, predicts the future outputs of the actual plant over the prediction horizon and computes the control effort over the control horizon at every sampling instance. Herein, PFC control performance of a one-link finger using a pneumatic balloon actuator is reported.