SICE-ICASE International Joint Conference 2006

Oct. 18-21, 2006 in Bexco, Busan, Korea

Development of Wearable Pneumatic Pressure Control Valve

Using On/off Valve Considered with Less Air Consumption
Tetsuya Akagil and Shujiro Dohta2
Department of Intelligent Mechanical Engineering, Okayama University of Science, Okayama, Japan
1 (Tel: +81-86-256-9786; E-mail: akagigare.ous.acjp)
2 (Tel: +81-86-256-9564; E-mail: dohtagare.ous.acjp )
Abstract: Virtual reality has been flourishing as an interactive information technology. Recently, virtual reality
systems that feed back to human senses have only been realized as visual and acoustic feedback. However,
they are not enough to realize the force feedback system for hands, arms, legs and so on. The control system in
such a force feedback system requires a soft actuator that needs to be flexible so as not to injure the body, and
also required small sized and compact control devices such as pressure control valves that can adjust the
generated forces of many actuators in order to apply it to the multi-degree motions of humans. The purpose of
our study is to develop small sized pressure control valve considered with less air consumption. In this study,
we proposed and tested a small sized pressure control system using on/off valves. We investigated the optimal
operation of on/off valves in the control system to reduce exhaust air. We also developed multi port pressure
control system using time shearing method based on the connected chamber volume.
Keywords: Small sized pressure control valve, Less air consumption, Multi port pressure control
pneumatic solenoid valves, a pressure sensor and a
1. INTRODUCTION controller. One ofthe on/off valves is used as a suction
Virtual reality has been flourishing as an interactive valve, the other is used as an exhaust valve.
information technology. Recently, virtual reality
systems that feed back to human senses have only been
realized as visual and acoustic feedback. However,
they are not enough to realize the force feedback system
for hands, arms, legs and so on. The control system in
such a force feedback system requires a soft
actuator[1-4] that needs to be flexible so as not to injure
the body, and also required small sized and compact
control devices such as pressure control valves[5-6] that
can adjust the generated forces of many actuators in
order to apply it to the multi-degree motions of humans.
In this study, we proposed and tested a small sized
pressure control system using on/off valves. We
investigated the optimal operation of on/off valves in
the control system to reduce exhaust air. We also
developed multi port pressure control system which can
control the pressure of many ports at the same time by
using a time shearing method based on the connected
chamber volume.
2. CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATION (a)View of tested valve
In order to develop a small sized pressure control
valve that can be used in a wearable driving system, the
valve needs to be lightweight and compact. Usually,
pneumatic servo valves use an armature driven by an
electromagnetic solenoid in order to adjust the opening fly
area of the valve. The solenoid must be as large as
possible in order to generate sufficient force to
overcome the sliding friction between the cylinder and
the armature sealing. Therefore, we used a small sized
pneumatic on/off type solenoid valve (Koganei Co. Ltd.
G010lHEl), and the size of each valve is 20 x 10 x 35
mm and the mass is about 15g. Figure 1 shows the
construction of the pressure control valve using two (b) Schematic diagram oftested valve
on/off valves. The device consists of two on/off type Fig. 1 Construction of pressure control valve

89-950038-5-5 98560/06/$10 © 2006 ICASE

447
The controller consists of a microcomputer (Hitachi Co. unstable phenomenon is related to resonance frequency
Ltd. H8/3664) and transistors which can drive two of an armature in the on/off valve. Therefore, we
on/off valves. investigated the optimal control gain k to inhibit
The pressure control using two valves is done as pressure oscillation. Table 1 shows the combination of
follows. First, the microcomputer gets the voltage optimal control gain k for various desired pressure and
from the pressure sensor and the reference voltage connected chamber volume. Figure 4 (a) and (b) show
through a 10 bit A/D converter in the microcomputer. the transient responses of output pressure using the
In operation, the microcomputer drives the suction or preview control method with the optimal control gain.
exhaust valves through the transistors according to the We can see that the pressure oscillation around the
following equation based on error e(i) and error speed desired pressure in the case using chamber volume of 10
(e(i)-e(i-1)). Where, k is a control parameter that is and 12 cc can be reduced. As a result, we concluded
related to a preview time. that the control gain using in the range of volume from
8 to 14 cc was useful to inhibit the pressure oscillation.
u(i) = e(i) + k (e(i) - e(i - 1)) (1) In addition, from the experimental results of measuring
the air consumption with various combination of the
If the control input u(i) is within ±WkPa(that means desired pressure and the gain k, the gain k=2 in the case
dead zone), both valves are turned off. In the case
when the u(i) is larger than +WkPa, the suction valve is 500
turned on and the exhaust valve is turned off. In the (0
other case, both valves are driven so as to become the a-400
opposite state of the previous case. Compared with an
ordinary pressure control valve using on/off valves
controlled by pulse width modulation, the tested valve
n
300 4cc
0)
consumes less air. This is because the tested valve has U)
L-10 -esire pressure
a-
the state that both the suction and exhaust on/off valves Outut pressure
are turned off. 2 3 4 5
Time T(s)
3. LESS AIR CONSUMPTION AND MASS (a) Case of using volume of 4cc
The tested valve controller has a function of UUL
a ll
l

measuring the volume connected with the valve. The

n'-.e 409
1-1

measuring principle is as follows. In the first operation 1-1

of the valve, the microcomputer drives the suction n

a)
uu
'nr%n
on/off valve. The pressure in the connected chamber
increases. The microcomputer counts the time when U,200
U)
10cc
pressure in the chamber reached at 400 kPa from 0 kPa 0C
by detecting the output voltage through the pressure
sensor. So the counting value is proportional to the size 1I

2 3 4
I

5
Time T(s)
of volume as shown in Fig.2, the controller can predict (b) Case of using volume of 1 Occ
the volume before controlling. By this method, the
controller adjusts control parameter according to the 500
volume in order to improve the control performance. a-400
80 CL ~300

60
u- 200
U)
12cc
n~ 100
L-

a) 40 0° 1 2 3 4 5
E Time T(s)
-520- Counti ng
time (c) Case of using volume of 12cc
500
O0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 n
400
Counting time Tc(s)
Fig.2 Relation between counting time and volume a)

Figure 3(a), (b), (c) and (d) show the transient u- 200
U)
15cc
responses of output pressure in the case when the valve L-
n~ 100
connected to the chamber with volume of 4, 10, 12 or 1s

2
A

3_

4 5
15 cc. In the experiment, we used control parameter k Time T(s)
=0 and W=O. From Fig.3, it can be seen that the (d) Case of using volume of 15cc
pressure oscillation occurred around the desired Fig.3 Transient response of output pressure
pressure in case of using volume of 10 and 12 cc. The without preview control method

448
 k~ ~
of volume with more than 30 cc was used so as to
reduce air consumption.
Table 1 Optimal control gain k
Tank volume V(cc)
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 15 30 45 60 75
o 100 0 0 0 0 7 8 5 0 2 2 2 2

QL 200 0 0 0 0 7 12 0 0 2 2 2 2
a. 300 0 0 0 1 8 12 0 0 2 2 2 2

c.;nn
n (0
400
a)
D 200 10cc
(n
CL1010
n~ Desiredpressure
-
Output pressure
0 1 2 3 4 5 Fig.7 Schematic diagram of multi port pressure
Time T(s)
control valve
(a) Case of using volume of 10cc
Z)uu In order to realize less air consumption of the valve,
n 400 we investigate the effect of dead zone W around the
desired pressure on the air consumption. Figure 5
aLa) 300
Dcn 200
12cc shows the relation between the width of dead zone W
kPa and steady state errors. Figure 6 shows the
a)
L100
relation between the width of dead zone W kPa and the
amount of exhaust air, respectively. From Fig.5, the
0O
1 2 3 4 5 steady state error increases as the dead zone increases.
Time T(s) From Fig.5 and Fig.6, we can find that exhaust air, that
(b) Case of using volume of 12cc is air consumption, comes to converge in case of using
Fig.4 Transient response of output pressure wider dead zone of more than + 2.4 kPa.
with preview control method In order to reduce the mass of the tested valve for
driving one actuator, we proposed and tested a multi
50 port pressure control system. Figure 7 shows the
4cc schematic diagram of multi port pressure control valve
40 1 Occ
I - 14cc that we developed. The system consists of several
CL 30 I \ 60cc pressure control valves that consists of two on/off
20 valves mentioned above and a microcomputer as a
0
controller. The method for controlling the multi port
pressure at the same time is as follows. First, the
'0 microcomputer detects each connected chamber volume
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 by driving the valve one by one. The microcomputer
Dead zone W(kPa)
calculates the assigned working time for each valve
Fig.5 Relation between error and dead zone based on each chamber volume. After one pressure
control valve is controlled for a certain period, the
_h-
c,)
r-,U .-
microcomputer selects to drive another valve in other
v _ 4cc
1 Occ
several valves. By using this control method, the
4 -a- 14cc tested valve can control the output pressure of several
._
ports, that is, each valve is controlled for a certain
-o3 period according to the size of the connected chamber
volume. By using the micro computer that has 8
x 1 channels as an analog to digital converter, the tested
LL ,, system has a function to drive 4 pressure control valves
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 at the same time.
Dead zone W(kPa) Figure 8 (a) and (b) show the transient responses
Fig.6 Relation between exhausted air and dead zone of output pressure from three pressure control valves. In

449
Fig.8, each colored line shows the result using various In order to confirm the evaluation for applying the
chamber volume connected with each valve. From time shearing method to the tested valve, Figure 9 (a)
Fig. 8 (b), we can see that each valve is driven for and (b) show the transient responses of output pressure
several milliseconds that is proportional to the size of from three pressure control valves with same period of
each volume every 60 milliseconds. As a result, we controlling without time shearing for each port. Figure
can realize a simple multi port pressure control valve 9 (a) shows the results using the same shortest period of
controlled by one controller using the time shearing pressure control for each port. Figure 9 (b) shows the
method. case when the longest period of control was applied for
each port. From Fig.9, we can see that the tracking
500 error is larger than the case using the time shearing
CL 400 method as shown in Fig.8 (b). We can confirm that it
is useful to apply the proposed time sharing method to
n 300 the multi port pressure control valve.
a)
,)- 200
Co
4. CONCLUSIONS
en
This study that we aim to develop a wearable
pressure control valve can be summarized as follows.
00 0.5 1 1.5 2 We proposed and tested a small sized pressure control
Time T(s) system using on/off valves and a microcomputer. We
(a) Transient response for 2 s also added a function of measuring the connected
200 -Desired pressure volume to the valve. We investigated the optimal
L 180 - -15cc control parameters based on chamber volume and
n - 30cc
-45cc desired pressure of the valve to reduce air consumption.
n 160 We also developed multi port pressure control system
a)
,,,(A) 140 using the time shearing method based on the chamber
volume to reduce a total mass of the valve for driving
La_1 20 several actuators.
Finally, we express our thanks that a part of this
i%0~0 220 240 260
Time T(ms)
280 300 research was supported by Japanese scientific research
funding.
(b) Tiransient response from 0.2s to 0.3s
Fig.8 Result using 3 port pressure control valve REFERENCES
with time shearing method [1] K.Yamamoto et al, Development of Wearable
Power Assisting Suit, Proc. of FLUCOME
2003,113.pdf, pp.1-6,2003.
500 [2] T.Akagi, S.Dohta and et al, Development of a
m400
a- Flexible Pneumatic Actuator with a Flexible
aL300v Tube, Proc INTERMAC2001 Joint Tech.
a) Con,F- 1093.pdf, pp.1- 10, 2001.
U)-200-
Co Desired pressure [3] T.Akagi and S.Dohta, Development of Rodless
CL Lio
100 15cc
~~~3cc
n
-30Cc
45cc
Type Flexible Pneumatic Cylinder and Its
Application, Proc. ofActuator2004, pp.751-754,
"-0 0.
0.5 11
1.
1.5 2 2004,.
Time T(s) [4] T.Akagi and S.Dohta, "Development of Rodless T
(a)Results using minimum control period ype Flexible Pneumatic Cylinder and Its Appli
cation for Long Stroke McKibben Type Actuat
or", Proc. of JFPS Fluid power2005, JS012.pdf,
pp. 1-4, 2005.
[5] T.Akagi and S.Dohta,"Development of Small S
ized Multi-port Pressure Control Valve for We
arable Actuator", Proc. of 13th IEEE ROMAN2
004, pp.649-654, 2004.
0.5 1 1.5 2
[6] T.Akagi and S.Dohta,"Development of Wearabl
Time T(s) e Pneumatic Actuator and Multi-port Pressure
(b) Results using maximum control period Control Valve", Proc. of ICAM2004, pp.474-47
9, 2004.
Fig.9 Result using 3 port pressure control valve
without time shearing method

450