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Based on Japanese aging society, a welfare pneumatic equipment to execute a rehabilitation for the temporally injured elderly and disabled is actively researched and developed. In the previous study, a portable rehabilitation device using extension type flexible pneumatic actuators (EFPAs), built-in quasi-servo valves and built-in displacement sensors using a wire type linear potentiometer was proposed and tested. In this study, to increase the generated force and bending stiffness of the device, the actuator that has three parallel arranged EFPAs with sponge cover was proposed and tested. As a result, the generated force of the improved actuator becomes 1.5 times than the previous one. The portable rehabilitation device using the improved actuator was proposed and tested. The built-in attitude control system using valves, sensor and an embedded controller was developed. The attitude control based on the analytical model of the device was also proposed. As a result, it can be found that the displacement of each actuator can trace well for each desired position.
Research papers (academic journals)
