Sliding-mode Position Control of a 1-dof Set-up Based on Pneumatic Muscles

A one-degree-of-freedom arm driven by pneumatic muscles has been designed and built in order to research the applicability of pneumatic artificial muscles in industrial applications. The experimental set-up is very non-linear and very difficult to control properly. As a reference, an enhanced PID controller was designed. At the same time, a sliding-mode controller based on an observer was designed and implemented. Firstly, this paper presents the experimental set-up and the system’s linear models. After that, it focuses on the process of designing the sliding-mode controller. Finally, some results obtained in simulation as well as experimentally are presented. Copyright © 2008 IFAC