Development of training equipment with an adaptive and learning mechanism using balloon actuator-sensor system

This paper proposes training equipment using a balloon actuator-sensor system (BASS) for persons unable to move their hands because of injury or disease. BASS is able to control the stiffness adaptively using an adaptive learning impedance controller. The pneumatic actuator has excellent compliance and flexibility, which is good for a humanmechanical system. However, it is also nonlinear, hence high precision control is difficult. Therefore, a CMAC-PID control scheme is installed. Finally, the BASS control performance is evaluated in a control experiment.