The sliding mode control for different shapes and dimensions of IPMC on resisting its creep characteristics

Ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) is a novel smart material which has been widely implemented in MEMS, biomimetic mechanical and electrical integrated system and micro operation system. While the IPMC with different shapes and dimensions has been implemented in many different types of biomechanical integrated systems, one of its inherent properties called creep characteristic is difficult to be handled, which limits the further application of different IPMCs in integrated systems. A promising control method called sliding mode control (SMC) is proposed to resist the creep characteristics in this paper. The SMC controller can regulate IPMC actuators with different shapes and dimensions effectively to resist the creep characteristics without changing parameters of the control system. Experiments of four different types of IPMC actuators were conducted on the semi-physical SMC experimental platform. All the experimental results confirm the feasibility of the SMC control approach on regulating the multi-IPMCs with different shapes and dimensions based integrated system.