Micro Pneumatic Valve Heads: Shinichi Hirai Contact: Kotaro Kishikawa Date: 2003 - Mailing address: Dept. Robotics, Ritsumeikan Univ. Kusatsu, Shiga 525-8577, Japan Supported by: Associated lab/group:

Project Description

We develop a micro pneumatic proportional valve that can be embedded into pneumatic muscles and can control air flow of 0.5 MPa pressure and 5 l/min flow rate to drive the pneumatic muscles.

2019/5/30	Lecturing "Vibration-driven Micro Pneumatic Valves" at a seminar in spring conference of Japan Fluid Power System Society
2017/11/29-12/2	Demonstrating soft grippers and micro pneumatic valves at International Robot Exhibition
2015/12/18	Demonstrating micro pneumatic valves at Robotics Technology Seminar in Grand Front Osaka
2015/12/2-5	Demonstrating binding hands and micro pneumatic valves at International Robot Exhibition
2009/8/1	Demonstration of unconstrained poppet valves and tensegrity robots in Open Campus.
2006/11/30-12/2	Exhibition of Unconstrained Poppet Valves at International Next Generation Robot Fair (INTEX Osaka). (Nikkan Kougyo Shimbun 2006/11/21) (photo in article)

Personnel

	Name	Title	Degree
	Zhou Ziyuan	M2
	Nagai Syunya	M1
	Kotaro Kishikawa	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Furuta Haruki	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Kubo Toshiki	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Fujiki Ryosuke	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Kouhei Yamamoto	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Koutaro Taniwa	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Kazuya Miyaji	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Suzuki Higuchi	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Kazuhiro Kato	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Kenta Kouzai	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Kazuhiro Izusawa	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Masayuki Tatsumi	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Yoichiro Ogawa	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Jien Sumadi	Graduated	Ph.D
	Shouta Uehara	Graduated	Master of Eng.
	Zhao Zifu	Graduated
	Kishida Takumi	Graduated
	Kanako Fujiwara	Graduated
	Masahiko Ito	Graduated
	Hiroshi Takayama	Graduated

Publications

• Sumadi Jien, Shinichi Hirai, and Kenshin Honda, Miniaturization Design of Piezoelectric Vibration-Driven Pneumatic Unconstrained Valves, Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics, Vol.22, No.1, pp.91-99, 10.20965/jrm.2010.p0091, Feb., 2010
• Sumadi Jien, Shinichi Hirai, and Kenshin Honda, Miniaturized Unconstrained On-Off Pneumatic Poppet Valve - Experiment and Simulation -, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, Vol.14, Issue 5, pp.626-635, 10.1109/TMECH.2009.2011049, Oct., 2009

• Shinichi Hirai and Kazuhiro Kato, Micro Pneumatic Valves for Robotic Wearable Systems, The 24th Int. Symp. on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2015), 10.1109/ROMAN.2015.7333584, Kobe Int. Conf. Center, Kobe, Japan, Aug. 31 - Sept. 4, 2015
• Masayuki Tatsumi, Kazuhiro Izusawa, and Shinichi Hirai, Miniaturized Unconstrained Valves with Pressure Control for Driving a Robot Finger, IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO 2011), pp.1528-1533, 10.1109/ROBIO.2011.6181506, Phuket Island, Thailand, Dec. 7-11, 2011
• Jien Sumadi, Shinichi Hirai, Yoichiro Ogawa, Masahiko Ito, and Kenshin Honda, Pressure Control Valve for McKibben Artificial Muscle Actuators with Miniaturized Unconstrained Pneumatic On/Off Valves, Proc. IEEE/ASME Int. Conf. on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM2009), 10.1109/AIM.2009.5229882, Singapore, July 14-17, 2009
• Sumadi Jien, Yoichiro Ogawa, Shinichi Hirai, and Kenshin Honda, Performance Evaluation of a Miniaturized Unconstrained Digital On-Off Switching Valve, 2008 IEEE/ASME Int. Conf. on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM2008), pp.659-664, 10.1109/AIM.2008.4601738, Xi'an, China, July 2-5, 2008
• Hiroshi Takayama, Jien Sumadi, and Shinichi Hirai, Unconstrained Pneumatic On-Off Poppet Valve Driven by Piezoelectric Actuator, 2007 IEEE/ASME Int. Conf. on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM2007), 10.1109/AIM.2007.4412445, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, Sept. 4-7, 2007
• Shota Uehara and Shinichi Hirai, Unconstrained Vibrational Pneumatic Valves for Miniaturized Proportional Control Devices, 9th Int. Conf. on Mechatronics Technology (ICMT2005), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Dec. 5-8, 2005

Notes

Album	A pair of micro pneumatic valves (near coins) is driving a mechanical gripper. (mov 42.6MB)	Robot finger driven by micro valves (wmv 0.7MB)	Opening/closing of micro valve (mpg 4.5MB)	Micro valves driving pneumatic actuator (avi 10.3MB)
Three-way valve	Driving and control circuit	Robotic finger with microvalves	Robotic finger with microvalves	Driving circuit of micro valve

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