Project · Sep 2025 — Present
Dual-Mode Electro-Pneumatic Control System
Fabricated electro-pneumatic controller reused for Yeaberry's positive-pressure soft gripper and MORI's vacuum pneumatic circuit.
Highlights
- Designed and fabricated a reusable two-layer controller integrating an ESP32, pressure feedback, and PWM interfaces for a pump and solenoid valve through external MOSFET drivers.
- Deployed the same controller for Yeaberry's positive-pressure soft gripper, then retrofitted it for MORI's vacuum pneumatic circuit.
- Implemented the R5 vacuum-control revision with atmospheric zeroing, sensor-fault handling, safe venting, configurable PID tuning, and a 50 ms control loop.
Details
Reusable pneumatic control
I designed and fabricated this electro-pneumatic controller as a reusable subsystem for soft-robotic pneumatic circuits. The two-layer board coordinates an ESP32, pressure sensing, and PWM interfaces to a pump and solenoid valve through separate MOSFET drivers. Its hardware includes 12 V and 5 V power handling, an ADS1115 for pressure acquisition from an XGZP6847A sensor, and level-shifted I2C communication.
The original controller was developed and deployed from September through December 2025 for Yeaberry’s positive-pressure soft gripper. From December 2025 through February 2026, I retrofitted the same physical board for MORI’s vacuum pneumatic circuit. Designing the electronics as a shared subsystem made it possible to adapt one controller across distinct pneumatic operating modes instead of treating the robot-specific integrations as isolated designs.
R5 vacuum-control revision
The current R5 revision refines the vacuum configuration in firmware. It samples pressure through the ADS1115 on a 50 ms control period and requires an atmospheric ZERO calibration before accepting a negative-pressure target. The controller vents on malformed commands and pressure-signal faults, constrains targets to the configured vacuum range, and exposes proportional, integral, derivative, deadband, and vent-pulse settings for serial tuning and persistence.
R5 is an implemented ongoing refinement. Its closed-loop vacuum behavior is awaiting physical validation, so this record does not claim pressure accuracy, settling time, or other measured control performance.