Robust control of ionic polymer-metal composites

Ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMCs) have been considered for various applications due to their light weight, large bending, and low actuation voltage requirements. However, their response can be slow and vary widely, depending on various factors such as fabrication processes, water content, and contact conditions with the electrodes. In order to utilize their capability in various high-performance microelectromechanical systems, controllers need to address this uncertainty and non-repeatability while improving the response speed. In this work, we identified an empirical model for the dynamic relationship between the applied voltage and the IPMC beam deflection, which includes the uncertainties and variations of the response. Then, four types of controller were designed, and their performances were compared: a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller with optimized gains using a co-evolutionary algorithm, and three types of robust controller based on H-infinity, H-infinity with loop shaping, and mu-synthesis, respectively. Our results show that the robust control techniques can significantly improve the IPMC performance against non-repeatability or parametric uncertainties, in terms of the faster response and lower overshoot than the PID control, using lower actuation voltage.