IPAS: A Compact Multi-Channel Pneumatic System With Embedded Hierarchical Control for Soft Dexterous Hands

Pneumatically actuated soft dexterous hands, featuring multiple independently actuated degrees of freedom (DoFs), are increasingly employed as robotic end-effectors for versatile manipulation tasks. However, current pneumatic systems are typically bulky with limited system-level integration. They rely on centralized architectures where a single processor handles all control tasks and lack support for large-scale multi-channel control, limiting their applicability to soft dexterous hands. To address these challenges, we present an Integrated Pneumatic Actuation System (IPAS) that integrates 20 independent channels within the wrist space, enabling direct deployment on a robotic arm. Compared to state-of-the-art systems, IPAS achieves a 67<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\%$</tex-math></inline-formula> increase in channel count while reducing system volume by two-thirds. An embedded hierarchical control architecture with a modular hardware-software design enables the coordinated and parallel execution of control, sensing, and valve actuation. Experimental results demonstrate RMSEs of 0.3 kPa in steady-state pressure control and 1.8 kPa in pressure trajectory tracking. The multi-channel actuation capability is further validated through teleoperated and autonomous grasping experiments. The modular design of the IPAS valve array and control units ensures maintainability, scalability, and algorithmic flexibility, providing a general-purpose hardware-software platform for soft dexterous hand control and manipulation research.