Studies on opto-pneumatic servo system - (Extension to a normal scale control system)

An optical servo system, which can be used in hazardous environments, is a novel and attractive control system. In our previous paper, we proposed an analytical model of a tested optical servo system which consists of an opti cal servo valve and a small pneumatic cylinder in order to improve the posi tion control performance. This paper describes an extension of the optical servo system to a more normal scale system using a normal pneumatic rodless cylinder with a full stroke of 600 mm. First, two kinds of opto-pneumatic servo system using the rodless cylinder are explained briefly. Second, the control performance of the first system which uses two flow amplifiers in t he market is investigated. Finally, the optical servo valve is designed and improved by using the analytical model proposed previously. And the contro l performance of the second system using the improved valve is investigated . As a result, it is shown that the improved optical servo valve is more us eful in a normal scale control system compared with the flow amplifier.