Modeling and tracking control of an IPMC actuator for underwater applications

摘要

Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) actuators have recently attracted significant attentions in many industrial, medical and biomedical applications, especially for those that require an aqueous medium. IPMC actuators can produce a large deflection under a low driving voltage. Moreover, they are soft and flexible which make them suitable to be used to hold and pick up different species of tiny living objects or handle biological material. As a matter of fact, these tasks require accurate path tracking which motivates us to develop an IMPC tracking control system for its tip displacement to perform micro-positioning for underwater applications. In this paper, we carry out the modeling of the IPMC actuator under study and also design a simple but effective tracking controller for the IPMC to follow desired tracking profiles. Experiments were performed to verify the control design for the IPMC actuator and the results show that the tip displacement of the IPMC actuator can follow different desired reference signals at acceptable response speed and accuracy.