Modeling and Force Control of Thin Soft McKibben Actuator

Abstract

This paper presents the modeling of a thin soft McKibben actuator using the system identification (SI) method and its force control. Procedures from the system identification method are used to create a mathematical model (transfer function) from the test data. The autoregressive with exogenous input (ARX) model was chosen as the model structure of the system. Next, a PSO-PID controller was proposed for the force control of the actuator. The simulation data were verified against the test data for the force control using PSO-PID and conventional PID. Results showed that the developed model represents the actual system by giving the same characteristics in the force control analysis in step, multi-step, and sinusoidal input.