| Summary: | An optical servo system is a new control system which can be used in hazardous environments; such as those with electromagnetic influence, radiation and so on. The purpose of our study is to develop such an optical control system. In our previous study, an optical servo valve in which the output differential pressure was proportional to input optical power had been developed. However, the dynamics of the valve depended on the time required to move the flapper membrane of a fluid booster amplifier using the lower flow rate from the photo-fluidic interface. In addition, the lifetime of the valve depends on that of the fluid booster amplifier that has mechanical moving parts. As a next step, we need to improve the dynamics and to get longer lifetime of the optical servo valve and try to develop another type of optical servo valve whose elements have no mechanical moving parts. In this paper, a photo-fluidic control valve which consists of the photo-fluidic interface and fluid amplifier only using fluidics is proposed. As a result, we found that the tested valve generated output differential pressure of + 80 kPa or -80 kPa according to applied optical power. By driving a pneumatic cylinder whose inner diameter is 16 mm with a stroke of 100 mm using the tested valve, we also confirmed that the tested valve has enough output fluid power to drive a small-sized pneumatic cylinder on the market.
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