Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Korea.
Soft Robot. 2021 Oct;8(5):564-576. doi: 10.1089/soro.2020.0007. Epub 2020 Nov 20.
Owing to their compliance, lightweight, and high force density characteristics, pneumatic actuation systems have been widely implemented in various soft robots. However, pneumatic actuation systems exhibit low efficiency, poor control performance, and high noise; these make it extremely challenging to widely employ a pneumatic actuation system in mobile robots. To overcome these limitations, many researches were conducted on recycling the compressed air within such systems. However, the proposed approaches do not consider the system efficiency and exhaust performance of pneumatic systems. Therefore, this article proposes a recirculation system using a novel soft re-air valve based on the cardiac structure of fish. In particular, the proposed recirculation system recycles the compressed air to improve the system efficiency and pressurizing performance, and the soft re-air valve simultaneously prevents a decrease in the depressurizing performance. For the validation of the proposed scheme, experiments were conducted to evaluate the system efficiency, control performance, and exhaust noise. In contrast to conventional pneumatic systems, the experimental results revealed that the proposed system increased the overall system efficiency by 47.58%, reduced the position root mean square error by 8.16%, and reduced the exhaust noise by 47.52%.
由于气动致动系统具有顺从性、重量轻和高力量密度的特点，因此已广泛应用于各种软体机器人中。然而，气动致动系统的效率低、控制性能差、噪声大，这使得气动致动系统在移动机器人中广泛应用极具挑战性。为了克服这些限制，许多研究致力于回收这些系统中的压缩空气。然而，所提出的方法并没有考虑气动系统的系统效率和排气性能。因此，本文提出了一种基于鱼类心脏结构的新型软体再充气阀的再循环系统。具体来说，所提出的再循环系统回收压缩空气以提高系统效率和加压性能，而软体再充气阀同时防止减压性能下降。为了验证所提出的方案，进行了实验以评估系统效率、控制性能和排气噪声。与传统的气动系统相比，实验结果表明，所提出的系统将整体系统效率提高了 47.58%，位置均方根误差降低了 8.16%，排气噪声降低了 47.52%。
