A Review of Pneumatic Actuators Used for the Design of Medical Simulators and Medical Tools

International audienc

A mixed GPC-H infinity robust cascade position-pressure control strategy for electropneumatic cylinders

International audienceA robust cascade strategy combining an outer position predictive control loop and an inner H infinity pressure control loop is proposed and tested on an electropneumatic testbed for parallel robotic applications. Two types of cylinders are tested, the standard double acting cylinder and the rodless one. A position/pressure difference (or force) strategy is developed and implemented. As the behavior of the nonlinear cylinders is nonlinear, a feedback linearization strategy is adopted. A Generalized Predictive Controller (GPC) is synthesized for the position outer loop and a constrained LMI based H infinity controller is synthesized for the pressure inner loop. Experimental results show the feasibility of the control strategies and good performances in terms of robustness and dynamic tracking