Hammerstein model for hysteresis characteristics of pneumatic muscle actuators

As a kind of novel compliant actuators, pneumatic muscle actuators (PMAs) have been recently used in wearable devices for rehabilitation, industrial manufacturing and other fields due to their excellent actuation characteristics such as high power/weight ratio, safety and inherent compliance. However, the strong nonlinearity and asymmetrical hysteresis cause difficulties in the accurate control of robots actuated by PMAs. In this paper, a method for hysteresis modeling of PMA based on Hammerstein model is proposed, which introduces the BP neural network into the hysteretic system. In order to overcome the limitation of BP neural network’s single-valued mapping, an extended space input method is adapted while the Modified Prandtl–Ishlinskii model is applied to characterize the hysteretic phenomenon. A conventional PID control is implemented to track the trajectory of PMA with and without the feed-forward hysteresis compensation based on Hammerstein model, and experimental results validate the effectiveness of the designed model which has the advantages of high precision and easy identification

Automation and Robotics: Latest Achievements, Challenges and Prospects

This SI presents the latest achievements, challenges and prospects for drives, actuators, sensors, controls and robot navigation with reverse validation and applications in the field of industrial automation and robotics. Automation, supported by robotics, can effectively speed up and improve production. The industrialization of complex mechatronic components, especially robots, requires a large number of special processes already in the pre-production stage provided by modelling and simulation. This area of research from the very beginning includes drives, process technology, actuators, sensors, control systems and all connections in mechatronic systems. Automation and robotics form broad-spectrum areas of research, which are tightly interconnected. To reduce costs in the pre-production stage and to reduce production preparation time, it is necessary to solve complex tasks in the form of simulation with the use of standard software products and new technologies that allow, for example, machine vision and other imaging tools to examine new physical contexts, dependencies and connections