Control of a pneumatically driven robot arm and the design of a modular motor controller

This assignment is centered around the control of a newly developed, pneumatically driven robot arm. This robot arm consists of six pneumatic stepper motors, which share a total of eight pneumatic tubes to control them. As the tubes are shared between motors, the motors cannot be controlled independently and an intelligent algorithm is needed to control and keep track of the position of the motors. Also, depending on the control method and output characteristics (load, stiffness, valve control method, speed etc) it may be possible to generate smooth motions at some (approximately) constant speed and incorporate acceleration. This BSc assignment aims to investigate the control of the robot arm (i.e. position, velocity and acceleration control), and also includes development of efficient and re-usable controller hardware to operate the pneumatic valves accordingly.