Assessments on the improved modelling for pneumatic artificial muscle actuators

Abstract

In this paper, we present an analysis regarding the pneumatic air muscle modelling, with a particular emphasis on the exoskeleton robot control. We propose two calibration approaches for obtaining the model identification data. We used the measurement data acquired from the proposed approaches to identify different mathematical models of pneumatic muscles. These models specified the necessary muscle control pressure for the desired muscle force at a given muscle length value. We compared the performance between the different types of models identified by either of the calibration method. The identified model with the lowest validation error was implemented in pneumatic muscle control for an elbow exoskeleton system. As a result, the system exhibited satisfactory torque and position control tasks, adequately validating the proposed approach.