To perform tasks such as hold an object with a constant force, the reliable control of an ionic electroactive polymer
actuator is essential. The composite under research is an IPMC actuator with electrodes composed of nanoporous carbon
and membrane made of ionic polymer. Compared to traditional platinum electrodes, these novel electrodes do not crack
in clusters and have highly controllable properties which preserve even when the actuator is deformed. So far, there are
no reports on the dynamic force response of this composite. We present the first attempts of testing the force dynamics
of an IPMC with nanoporous carbon electrodes under open- and closed-loop controls. As many attempts have been
focused on the sensorless force control of ionic electroactive polymers, we first investigate the uncompensated dynamics
of the actuator, then use the direct inverse model to obtain the desired tracking performance. We also aim to identify the
conditions, under which the actuator is suitable for sensorless control. Furthermore, we improve the tracking ability of
the actuator using a feedback controller where the force sensor data is available and incorporate a feedforward controller
into the feedback control system. Based on the experiments, the resulting effects on the tracking performance are
observed.
Performance of the conducting polymer actuators (CPAs) are affected by material uncertainties, operating conditions and
time of operation. The same size CPAs may have different actuation capabilities, which can also degrade over the course
of operation. For accurate and repeatable position tracking, the uncertainties and variations in the actuator dynamics have
to be carefully addressed to achieve a desirable control performance.
This paper presents a systematic approach for the identification of parametric uncertainties and designing robust H∞ control to achieve a guaranteed performance when the CPA is used for position tracking. We identify the uncertainties in
actuator dynamics by performing series of experiments using two geometrically equivalent CPAs. A set of system
models is obtained to determine the average actuation capability. The variations in the actuator dynamics are modeled as
a parametric uncertainty. H∞ controllers are designed and the robustness of the controllers is validated by experiments on two different but same sized CPAs. The performance of the H∞ controller is also compared with a proportional-integralderivative (PID) controller. We demonstrate that the robust H∞control strategy performs repeated acceptable performances on both samples.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.