Measuring motion parameters of Ionic Polymer-Metal Composites (IPMC) actuators with a CCD camera

An image processing system for the measurement of small movements of synthetic IPMC materials is presented in this work. The proposed technique is based on extracting the appropriate information from subsequent pictures frames. Since the time-deference between these pictures is known, it is possible for the system to calculate both displacements and speed of the moving part. The processing algorithm implements a fully automated procedure for the localization of the point of interest (i.e. the edge of a micro-robotic wing) in every frame and then calculates the distance (displacement) between subsequent frames. This method is particularly useful for rather large movements of the IPMC strips as found in micro-robotic applications. The results obtained by the proposed system are also compared with concurrent measurements by a high accuracy laser positioning system, and have been found quite satisfactory for the specific application (resolution better than 0.5mm).