利用定壓氣瓶改良人行走時的氣體能量儲存機制，並提升自我氣體能量儲存對於各種氣動應用之易用性

Abstract

氣動系統已被用於觸覺回饋、輔助、復健、軟性機器人、人類強化等等各式各樣的應用中。這些應用皆依靠加壓氣體驅動，而現今的加壓氣體來源主要為拋棄式高壓鋼瓶或電力驅動的空氣壓縮機等耗費大量能量之裝置。儲存人行走時之能量，為可自我維持的穿戴式系統提供了發展機會。然而當前的穿戴式氣壓儲存系統皆使用固定體積的存儲容器，這些容器需要耗費大量的行走步數加壓至可驅動氣動裝置之氣壓，並且許多已儲存的能量並不能被有效使用。因此，我們提出了一個使用可變化體積的定壓氣瓶作為儲存媒介的系統來改善上述問題。經由將儲存之氣壓保持在驅動氣動應用之目標壓力，我們的系統能夠顯著地提升氣壓儲存系統的可用性，不僅大幅降低了加壓至目標壓力所需要的步數，同時也最大程度的妥善利用已儲存之能量。對系統的評測結果顯示，在同樣使用最大體積 200 毫升儲存容器的條件下，我們的系統只需要行走一步即可達到目標壓力，而使用固定體積容器的系統則需要多耗費 4 倍的行走步數才能達到目標氣壓。同時在雙方容器儲存相同氣壓的狀況下驅動氣動人工肌肉，我們的系統可以支持約高於 1 倍的驅動次數。

Pneumatic actuation systems have been developed for a variety of wearable haptic feedback, human-augmentation, assistive, rehabilitation, and soft robotics applications. These systems actuate through pressurized air, which currently relies on either compressed air tanks that require replacement or electrically-powered air compressors that require significant power consumption. Energy harvesting from human motion offers the opportunity to develop self-sustaining wearable systems. However, current wearable pneumatic harvesting approach uses fixed-sized storage, which requires significant footsteps to reach usable pressure, leaving much stored energy underutilized, and the air pumps under foot may cause uncomfortable feeling. We present StepUp, which harvests and stores compressed air using re-sizable and constant-pressure storage. By storing air at the target actuation pressure, StepUp dramatically improves the usability of pneumatic harvesting systems by minimizing the number of footsteps needed to become usable, maximizing energy utilization while reducing the uncomfortable feeling caused by air pumps. Evaluation of our prototype with pneumatic artificial muscles shows that StepUp was capable of reaching usable pressure after just a single footstep, which was 4X faster than fixed-sized storage of the same 200mL volume (1 vs 5 steps), supporting nearly 2X the number of actuations (21 vs 11 times), and significantly more comfort than fixed-sized storage.