Soft simple Compact Valve Inducing Self-excited Vibration Aimed for Mobile Robots Unnecessary for Electricity

Abstract

This paper presents a novel valve for switching the pressure modes of to chambers by self-excited vibration instead of using electricity. The valve has a simple structure consisting of flexible tubes and small permanent magnets, which can be fabricated with compact size, lightweight and at low cost. When constant air pressure is applied to the input port of the valve, the magnet vibrates self-excitedly and two chambers which are connected to the output ports are alternately pressurized at the same frequency as the vibration. We present the principle of the valve and the modeling of the switching operation. Several switching experiments using a prototype valve were performed to show the characteristics of the proposed valve. Finally, the validity of our proposing method is verified by implementing it on a pneumatic mobile robot and realizing the line- free propulsion without electricity.