Closed-Loop Control of Electro-Ribbon Actuators.

ABSTRACT: Electro-ribbon actuators are lightweight, flexible, high-performance actuators for next generation soft robotics. When electrically charged, electrostatic forces cause the electrode ribbons to progressively zip together through a process called dielectrophoretic liquid zipping (DLZ), delivering contractions of more than 99% of their length. Electro-ribbon actuators exhibit pull-in instability, and this phenomenon makes them challenging to control: below the pull-in voltage threshold, actuator contraction is small, while above this threshold, increasing electrostatic forces cause the actuator to completely contract, providing a narrow contraction range for feedforward control. We show that application of a time-varying voltage profile that starts above pull-in threshold, but subsequently re

SUBMITTER: Diteesawat RS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7805931 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature