Study of Web-based integration of pneumatic manipulator and its vision positioning

Pneumatic driven system is widely used in industrial automation, mainly for relatively simple tasks with open-loop control. Because of the pneumatic system's compressibility and few stop positions, it was considered hard to control in a precise motion control system. With the help of newly developed pneumatic servo control technology, using servo-pneumatic positioning controller now is just as easy as using electro-servo system. This article discusses Web-based servo-pneumatic manipulator control and object recognition and positioning. The authors built a three-degrees-of-freedom (3 DOF) pneumatic manipulator with a servo-pneumatic closed-loop control system and machine vision system in their lab. Web-based tele-operation was a basic ability in this experimental system. After installing a CCD camera, video capture card, and related software developed by the authors, the robot could recognize the user specified object through the Web page and find its position. The remote user could command the robot to move to the position and to grab the object. The critical issues of Web-based control are to integrate hybrid open-architecture mechatronic system through the Web and develop a software language environment characterized by the script. The authors' experiment showed that pneumatic devices could serve as accurate position control and be controlled through the Web.