A NOVEL CONTROL STRATEGY FOR MULTIPLE SWITCHES BASED ON ELECTRO-RHEOLOGICAL FLUID

A compact or portable mechatronic embedded system application has a strictly demands of volume and/or power consuming. Comparing with electronic parts, switches and/or actuators take the most proportion of volume or weight and power consuming of the whole system. A novel method of connecting multiple switches/actuators built by using electro-rheological fluid and a pair of governing electrodes and their control strategy are introduced in this paper By using this method, the numbers of control components are changed from N times M to N plus M, the volume and weight reduced largely. A series structure is used in the application on multi-line Braille electro-book for blind people as a demonstration of this novel method It provides a novel solution of shrinking system for a compact or portable mechatronic embedded system application.