Design of Recirculation System and Re-valve for Increasing the Compressing Efficiency

Abstract

A pneumatic actuator ensures the safety of the wearable robots due to its compliant characteristics and high force density. However, the pneumatic actuator has the following problems: low compressing efficiency, low control bandwidth, and high noise. To overcome these problems, we have proposed the recirculation system. The concept is recycling high-pressure exhausted air in order to increase compressing efficiency. We have designed a Re-valve to recycle the compressed air and evaluated with experiments. The experimental results showed that the rest time of the compressor increased by 17.4%. The proposed system help pneumatic actuation to improve efficiency and performance while reducing noise.