The development of biochips is a major thrust of the rapidly growing biotechnology industry. Research on biomedical or biochemical analysis miniaturization and integration has made explosive progress by using biochips recently. For example, capillary electrophoresis (CE), sample preconcentration, genomic DNA extraction, and DNA hybridization have been successfully miniaturized and operated in a...

This paper presents an energetically derived control methodology to specify and regulate the oscillatory motion of a pneumatic hopping robot. An ideal lossless pneumatic actuation system with an inertia is shown to represent an oscillator with a stiffness, and hence frequency, related to the equilibrium pressures in the actuator. Following from an analysis of the conservative energy storage ele...

Perceived comfort level and ride stability are the two most important factors in the evaluation of suspension system in a mobile vehicle. It is extremely difficult to simultaneously maintain a high standard of vehicle ride, handling and body control in the vehicle by using conventional passive suspension system. However, the use of active suspensions would result in better comforts than the pas...

The two patients in this case series had experienced long-term difficulty controlling lymphedema at home. Both patients had used numerous home therapies, including older-generation intermittent pneumatic compression devices, without success. The Flexitouch system, an advanced pneumatic device, was prescribed to assist them with in-home efforts by providing therapy to their affected limbs in add...

This paper presents a rigorous analysis and design method for PWM-based control of pneumatic systems. An equivalent analytical model incorporating the effects of a finite PWM switching period is formulated. This equivalent model was motivated by a lack of control design and analysis techniques needed to treat the inherently non-analytical switching models associated with PWM-based systems. The ...

INTRODUCTION Our goal was to determine if the hemolysis among blood samples obtained in an emergency department and then sent to the laboratory in a pneumatic tube system was different from those in samples that were hand-carried. METHODS The hemolysis index is measured on all samples submitted for potassium analysis. We queried our hospital laboratory database system (SunQuest(®)) for potass...

AbstructThis article models a pneumatic system consisting of double-acting or single acting cylinder and a servovalve with the goal of providing an insight into pneumatic design and control requirements for Berkeley Exoskeleton (ht<v://wwu..me. berkeZev.edu/heZ/). The modeling approach uses the thermodynamic principles of energy and mass conservation. We demonstrate that pneumatic systems suffe...

In this paper, we model, analyze, and control an experimental set-up of a servo pneumatic cylinder. The dynamic behaviour of pneumatic actuator systems is dominant by nonlinear functions. First, a mathematical model for the pneumatic system is derived. Secondly, we investigate the mathematical properties of this model and show boundedness and positiveness of certain variables. Thirdly, we prove...

In recent years, Japanese society has been aging, engendering a labor shortage of young workers. Robots are therefore expected to perform tasks such as rehabilitation, nursing elderly people, and day-to-day work support for elderly people. The pneumatic balloon actuator is a rubber artificial muscle developed for use in a robot hand in such environments. This actuator has a long stroke and a hi...

This paper presents a novel control design, developed to realise fast and accurate position control of a pneumatic actuator using inexpensive on/off solenoid valves. In contrast to conventional control methods, the proposed control method operates chatter free, based on air compression. The control principle was developed by investigating the dynamics of a pneumatic actuator with an identified ...