Experimental Implementations of Adaptive Self-Organizing Fuzzy Slide Mode Control to a 3-DOF Rehabilitation Robot

Pneumatic muscle actuator has many advantages such as high power/weight ratio, high power/volume ratio, low price, little maintenance needed, great compliance, and inherent safety. Therefore, it can be suitably applied to rehabilitation engineering for persons with neuromuscular or musculoskeletal pathologies affecting extremity functions. However, excellent control performance can hardly be achieved by classical control methods because gas compression and nonlinear elasticity of bladder containers cause parameter variations. An adaptive self-organizing fuzzy sliding mode control (ASOFSMC) is developed in this study to improve control performance. Experimental results show that this control strategy can achieve excellent control performance.