Control of an Actuator Made of Two Antagonist McKibben Muscles via LMI Optimization

In the last decade, regain of interest in braided pneumatic artificial muscles has appeared. In fact, their low cost, light weight, high power and natural damping are all appealing properties. Nevertheless, these devices are hard to control because of their nonlinear and uncertain model. In this paper, simple and robust PID controllers are used without linearizing the model. This can be done by using the LMI optimization approach. The H₂ norm is used to minimize noise influence on the controllers. Also, two pneumatic equipments are considered and compared: a servovalve and two pressures valves. Experimental data is included and demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approaches