TY - JOUR
T1 - Control of a novel flexible finger using electro-conjugate fluid with built-in angle sensor
AU - Mori, Kento
AU - Yamaguchi, Akihiro
AU - Takemura, Kenjiro
AU - Yokota, Shinichi
AU - Edamura, Kazuya
N1 - Funding Information:
The work reported in this article was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Encouragement of Young Scientists (A) # 21686017 awarded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan.
PY - 2012/8
Y1 - 2012/8
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. 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, 200.3 mm3, generates maximum pressure of 92.6 kPa and maximum flow rate of 103.0 ml/min. The flexible finger (Ø 5 mm ×30mm), driven by the ECF pump, bends 150° with a rise time of 1 s. 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. 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, 200.3 mm3, generates maximum pressure of 92.6 kPa and maximum flow rate of 103.0 ml/min. The flexible finger (Ø 5 mm ×30mm), driven by the ECF pump, bends 150° with a rise time of 1 s. In addition, we construct a master-slave system using the ECF flexible finger and confirm its performance.
KW - Electro-conjugate fluid
KW - Flexible finger
KW - Soft actuator
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U2 - 10.1016/j.sna.2012.04.028
DO - 10.1016/j.sna.2012.04.028
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84866742973
SN - 0924-4247
VL - 183
SP - 75
EP - 83
JO - Sensors and Actuators, A: Physical
JF - Sensors and Actuators, A: Physical
ER -