Design of adaptive and learning control system for a movable neck supporter

In this paper, a movable neck supporter (MNS) is proposed for the handicapped persons who are unable to move their necks from his own motive with a high degree of disability. The proposed system has a parallel link mechanism using several pneumatic actuators. It assists the twisting and nodding motion of the user´s head. By the way, the head motion is different individually, and it is always changing by his condition. Therefore, some adaptive control schemes are needed for the MNS. Furthermore, the pneumatic actuator has excellent compliance and flexibility, and is suitable for the human-mechanical system. However, it also has nonlinearity, hence high precision control is quite difficult. Therefore, in this paper, the CMAC-PID control scheme is installed on the H8 microcomputer, and the adaptability of the control scheme is evaluated on some control experiments.