Development of small sized multi-port pressure control valve for wearable actuator

Recently, a virtual reality system and a power assisted system are paid much attention and are researched actively. In such a control system, an actuator and a driving device, such as a control valve, are mounted on the human body. Therefore, the actuator and driving system should be compact, lightweight and flexible so as not to impose an excessive load and not to injure the human body. The purpose of our study is to develop a wearable and compact driving system that uses a flexible and lightweight actuator, which can be safe enough to be attached to the human body. We proposed and tested new types of flexible pneumatic actuators that can be used even if the actuator is deformed by external force. In this study, we proposed and developed a multi-port pressure control valve, which can drive many wearable actuators at the same time to reduce the weight of the control valve for multi-degrees of freedom of motion.