Abstract
The continuous electromechanical deformation of dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) suffers from rate-dependent viscoelasticity, mechanical vibration, and configuration dependency, making the generalized dynamic modeling and precise control elusive. In this work, we present a generalized motion control framework for DEAs capable of accommodating different configurations, materials and degrees of freedom (DOFs). First, a generalized, control-enabling dynamic model is developed for DEAs by taking both nonlinear electromechanical coupling, mechanical vibration and rate-dependent viscoelasticity into consideration. Further, a state observer is introduced to predict the unobservable viscoelasticity. Then, an enhanced exponential reaching law-based sliding-mode controller (EERLSMC) is proposed to minimize the viscoelasticity of DEAs. Its stability is also proved mathematically. The experimental results obtained for different DEAs (four configurations, two materials, and multi-DOFs) demonstrate that our dynamic model can precisely describe their complex dynamic responses and the EERLSMC can achieve precise tracking control; verifying the generality and versatility of our motion control framework
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 919 - 935 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Robotics |
Volume | 4 |
Early online date | 4 Dec 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2024 |
Keywords
- Dielectric elastomer actuators
- generalized dynamic modeling
- rate-dependent viscoelasticity
- sliding-mode control
- soft robots