TY - GEN
T1 - Control of a flexible finger using electro-conjugate fluid
AU - Mori, Kento
AU - Yamaguchi, Akihiro
AU - Takemura, Kenjiro
AU - Yokota, Shinichi
AU - Edamura, Kazuya
PY - 2011/12/1
Y1 - 2011/12/1
N2 - An electro-conjugate fluid (ECF) is a kind of functional fluid, which produces a powerful flow when subjected to high DC voltage. It is known that a strong ECF flow is generated under non-uniform electric field, for example, the field with a pair of needle and ring electrodes. The ECF flow could be used as a micro fluid pressure source (an ECF pump) for actuators including an artificial muscle and a flexible finger etc. However, previous studies on ECF soft actuators only focused on confirmation of the driving principle. This means, an improvement of performance of ECF pumps and a control scheme for ECF soft actuators have yet to be studied in detail. Hence, this study improves the performance of the ECF pump, and proposes a novel control system for an ECF flexible finger. The ECF pump developed in this study generates maximum pressure of 92.6 kPa and maximum flow rate of 103.0 ml/min with 200.3 mm 3. The flexible finger (φ5 mm x 30 mm), driven by the ECF pump, bends 150 deg with a rise time of 1000 ms. In addition, we construct a master-slave system using the ECF flexible finger and confirm its performance.
AB - An electro-conjugate fluid (ECF) is a kind of functional fluid, which produces a powerful flow when subjected to high DC voltage. It is known that a strong ECF flow is generated under non-uniform electric field, for example, the field with a pair of needle and ring electrodes. The ECF flow could be used as a micro fluid pressure source (an ECF pump) for actuators including an artificial muscle and a flexible finger etc. However, previous studies on ECF soft actuators only focused on confirmation of the driving principle. This means, an improvement of performance of ECF pumps and a control scheme for ECF soft actuators have yet to be studied in detail. Hence, this study improves the performance of the ECF pump, and proposes a novel control system for an ECF flexible finger. The ECF pump developed in this study generates maximum pressure of 92.6 kPa and maximum flow rate of 103.0 ml/min with 200.3 mm 3. The flexible finger (φ5 mm x 30 mm), driven by the ECF pump, bends 150 deg with a rise time of 1000 ms. In addition, we construct a master-slave system using the ECF flexible finger and confirm its performance.
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U2 - 10.1109/ROBIO.2011.6181369
DO - 10.1109/ROBIO.2011.6181369
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84860754554
SN - 9781457721373
T3 - 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, ROBIO 2011
SP - 709
EP - 714
BT - 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, ROBIO 2011
T2 - 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics, ROBIO 2011
Y2 - 7 December 2011 through 11 December 2011
ER -