Pneumatic Modelling for Adroit Manipulation Platform

Abstract: ADROIT Manipulation platform is a pneumatically actuated, tendon driven 28 degree of freedom platform being developed for investigating complex hand manipulation behaviors. ADROIT derives its unique capabilities, necessary to support dynamic and dexterous manipulation, from a custom designed high-performance pneumatic actuation system for tendon-driven hands. The custom pneumatic actuation system is fast, strong, low friction-stiction, compliant and is capable of actuating a shadow hand skeleton faster that human capabilities -- at a unique combination of speed, force, and compliance that has never been achieved before. In this paper, we develop models for the pneumatic muscles of ADROIT and perform a thorough investigation of the various parameters that affect pressure dynamics in a pneumatic system such as, different cylinder types, leakage from valves and cylinders, valve deadzone, input pressure fluctuations etc to improve the model's accuracy.