Actuation of Pneumatic Artificial Muscle via Hydrogen Absorption/Desorption of Metal Hydride-LaNi₅

This paper presents experimental studies on mechanical actuations of a pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM), which is driven by hydrogen gas based metal hydride (MH). The dynamic performances of hydrogen absorption/desorption, taking place within a MH reactor, are controlled via implementing cooling/heating effects of a thermoelectric module (TEM). Hydrogen pressure is applied as a driving force to commanding work outputs of the PAM as desired mechanical actuations. Due to strong inherent nonlinearity, a conventional proportional integral derivative (PID) control law is not capable of regulating thermodynamic variables of the HM reaction according to desired performances of the PAM. In this study, the fuzzy adaptive PID control is proposed in manipulating the MH reaction via the TEM. This viability of the proposed methodology is confirmed by the fact that the gains of PID control law are adapted by fuzzy rule-based tuning scheme at various operating conditions of the MH reactor. The experimental results show that the proposed control technique is much more effective than a PID control in both transient and steady state performances of the MH reactor for servo mechanical actuation of the PAM.