Artificial Bee Colony algorithm based Auto-Disturbance Rejection Control for rehabilitation robotic arm driven by PM-TS actuator

Pneumatic Muscle (PM) has the advantages of cheapness, light weight, compliance, safe and high power/weight. It is suitable for rehabilitation engineering. To minimize the number of PM for driving a single joint of rehabilitation, a new PM-TS actuator comprising a PM and a Torsion Spring (TS) is proposed. Unlike the traditional agonist/antagonist PM actuator, the PM is arranged in appropriate place as agonist and the torsion spring provides opposing torque as antagonist in the proposed actuator. The dynamic model of a 1-DOF (Degree of Freedom) rehabilitation robotic arm is derived considering the PM-TS actuator. To realize high accurate trajectory tracking control of the robotic arm, an Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm based Auto-Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) is proposed, where ABC is employed to optimize the control parameters of ADRC. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of PM-TS actuator, and verify that the ABC based ADRC has satisfactory performance.