Experimental evaluation of a shape memory alloy wire actuator with a modulated adaptive controller for position control

This paper presents an experimental investigation of position control of a shape memory alloy (SMA) wire actuator with adaptive and modulated adaptive controllers. The transfer function model of the SMA wire actuator is determined from the experimental open loop response. Adaptive controllers, namely LMS-GSPI, RLS-GSPI and Kalman-GSPI, and modulated adaptive controllers using pulse width modulation (PWM) are designed. The performances of these controllers are experimentally investigated for the position control of an SMA wire actuator with and without thermal disturbance. Experimental results demonstrate that the modulated adaptive controllers outperform adaptive controllers.