Different Types of Control Systems for the Contraction Pneumatic Muscle Actuator

Abstract

Controlling the pneumatic muscle actuator (PMA) represents a challenging problem in soft robotics research field, it is difficult for the soft robot to achieve a good control performance due to the nonlinear and the hysteresis performance of the PMA. In the following work, a contractor PMA of 30 cm nominal length have been constructed from soft materials, then several approaches of control schemes have been utilized to control the contraction length of the PMA. The controllers are simulated using MATLAB/SIMULINK package. The contribution of the paper is to carry out and compare different control systems theoretically along with their performance analysis.