Intending to explore the possibility of the optical control robot without interposing any electrical signal, pneumatic control robot arm controlled with photofluidic interface was developed.The interface employs a light absorbing nozzle wall in a laminar proportional fluid amplifier. The fluidic output signal of the interface was amplified by a three-stage laminar proportional amplifier gain block. Robot arm has two members and two joints moved by pneumatic rotary actuators. A membrane type booster amplifier with three staged nozzle-flapper values was used to amplify the power of the output signal of the gain block so far as enough to drive the rotary actuators. Two control methods, such as proportional control employing integration compensation and model reference adaptive control were applied and the comparison of the suitability of these control methods was made.
Parallel manipulators have been increasingly developed over the last few years from a theoretical view point as well as for practical applications. In this paper, recent advances are summarized and various applications for this kind of manipulator are illustrated.
