Compliance characteristic and force control of antagonistic actuation by pneumatic artificial muscles

This paper presents compliance characteristics of antagonistic actuation by the pair of Mckibben pneumatic artificial muscles and force tracking using a sliding control scheme for safe human-robot interaction. The variable stiffness capability of artificial muscles was investigated carefully by resilience tests from a biased initial position and impact tests based on an intended collision between a stationary object and a rotating linkage actuated by pneumatic artificial muscles. Considering the frequency response analysis of a whole pneumatic circuit for artificial muscles, a sliding control system was designed to control contacting force between a linkage actuated by artificial muscles and a rigid environment. Experimental results showed that the proposed force control scheme gave better tracking performance under model uncertainties due to air flow than the conventional PID controller whose feedback gains were well-tuned experimentally.