Robust control of a trilayer conducting polymer actuator

Authors

M Itik, Karadeniz Technical University (Turkey)
Fatma Ulker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
G Alici, University of WollongongFollow

RIS ID

88705

Publication Details

Itik, M., Ulker, F. & Alici, G. (2014). Robust control of a trilayer conducting polymer actuator. Proceedings of SPIE: Electroactie Polymer Actuators and Devices (EAPAD 2014) (pp. 1-10). United States: SPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering.

Abstract

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 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.