A Control and Drive System for Pneumatic Soft Robots: PneuSoRD

This article describes an open-source hardware platform for controlling pneumatic soft robotic systems and presents the comparison of control schemes with on-off and proportional valves. The Pneumatic Soft Robotics Driver (PneuSoRD) can be used with up to one pump and pressure accumulator, 26 on-off valves, and 5 proportional valves, any of which can be operated in open or closed-loop control using up to 12 sensor inputs, which allows for the simultaneous control of a large number of soft actuators. The electronic driver connects to a National Instruments myRIO controller or an Arduino Due with the use of an adapter shield. A library of pressure control algorithms in both LabVIEW and Simulink is provided that includes bang-bang control, hysteresis control and PID control using on-off or proportional valves. LabVIEW and Simulink provide user-friendly interfaces for rapid prototyping of control algorithms and real-time evaluation of pressure dynamics. The characteristics and performance of these control methods and pneumatic setups are evaluated to simplify the choice of valves and control algorithm for a given application.