Control of a Pneumatic Muscle Manipulator Based on the Just-In-Time Method Expanded with the Internet

Abstract

This paper proposes the concept of networked JIT control based on a client-server architecture via the Internet, which is an expanded version of the Just-In-Time (JIT) control. In the proposed concept, the server machine has the database for the JIT control and the client machine has a plant to be controlled. The server machine performs the computation of an inverse model of the plant utilizing data stored in the database. The client machine executes a feedback control algorithm, communicates the plant data to the server through the Internet, and sends control commands to the plant. In addition to the general advantages of the JIT control, this concept allows for sharing the database on the server with the clients and reduces the costs of the addition of more clients. A control system of a robot manipulator driven by pneumatic muscle actuators, which are elastic and safe for humans but nonlinear and difficult to model, is constructed based on the proposed concept. Experimental results show that the proposed networked JIT control is realizable and leads to an improvement in the performance of the manipulator.