Politech scientists have developed a new cost-effective model of an industrial manipulator based on pneumatic muscles

26 Декабря 2022
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The pneumatic muscle-based model of the unit, according to specialists, has a great advantage over its "colleagues" in the workshop.

The pneumatic muscle has a smoother speed control, which means it can lift and lower objects gently and without much jerking, and the control scheme created by scientists allows the load to be balanced at any point.

"When compressed air is applied, the pneumomuscule increases in diameter, shrinks in length, and moves the output link of the manipulator to a given height. The most common pneumomucules in the industry are made of rubber and reinforced with a cord, the threads of which consist of rigid aramid fibers. Due to the occurrence of radial forces in the mesh nodes, the pneumomuscule will develop a rather large axial force up to 6000 newton," explained Lubov Kotkas, assistant of the Higher School of Power Engineering of the Institute of Energy of SPbPU.

"Our goal was to improve pneumatic manipulators and expand their application areas by simplifying the control system. In the first year we developed a mathematical model, in the second year we designed pneumatic drive circuits for manipulator control, performed numerical studies of operating modes - normal and emergency, then, in the third year, we set up an experiment on a laboratory stand to test the resulting mathematical model."

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