Abstract

Problem statement: Communication and control are two main components in any Mechatronics system. They can be designed either by centralized or decentralized approach. Both approaches can be chosen based on application designed and specific requirements of the designer. In this study, decentralized or normally called distributed approach was selected to solved communication and control of a human adaptive mechanical system namely Intelligent Chair Tools (ICT). The ICT seating system is powered by thirty six intelligent pneumatic actuators to facilitate investigation of chair shapes from spring and damping effect of seating and backrest surface. Three studies are proposed from the sitting experiments namely chair shapes, chair spring and chair damping properties. Approach: PSoC microcontroller was selected based on its features of having configurable analog and digital blocks. Its flexible modules and programmable peripherals ease designer in designing the communication and control of ICT in improved and faster way. Three protocols of USB, SPI and I2C were used for the communication system of ICT using PSoC. Flow charts of each communication protocols algorithms were discussed. On the other hand, the control system used PSoC’s ADC and counter modules to read inputs of pressure and encoder respectively. PWM module is used to control the valve and data communication was achieved using I2C module. Block diagram of unified control was discussed for further understandings of the control algorithms. Results: The PSoC specification, development design and experimental evaluation of ICT system are presented and discussed. Three studies of chair shapes, chair spring property and chair damping property from sitting experiment were shown. Conclusion/Recommendations: The PSoC microcontroller selection was discussed and application of its distributed communication and control was successfully applied to ICT. This distributed approach can be applied to other application suitable for local control approach for easy debugging, more modular design and intelligence in deciding output based on feedback inputs.

Highlights

  • Programmable System on Chip (PSoC) represents a whole new concept in microcontroller development

  • The values of position, Xr, stiffness, ks of spring property and viscous coefficient, c parameters of damping property will be changed to see the response to the user

  • Chair surface property: Using Intelligent Chair Tools (ICT), the initial surface of seat and backrest can be set by giving target position, Xr from Personal Computer (PC) to all 36 intelligent actuators

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Summary

Introduction

Programmable System on Chip (PSoC) represents a whole new concept in microcontroller development. The mixed signal arrays of Cypress integrate an 8 bit microcontroller with analogue and digital components in an embedded system. This architecture allows designer to create customized peripheral configurations to match the requirements of each individual application making PSoC different from other microcontroller (Jayapandian, 2006; Micakovic, 1998). This difference makes it being applied to industrialized application in user end tools and used as subject syllabus in educational subjects. The technical reference manual contains a block diagram that illustrates this structure as shown in Fig. 1 (Cypress Semiconductor, 2006)

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