Wave-shape pattern control of electroactive polymer gel robots

Abstract. This paper proposes wave-shape pattern control method for whole-body deformable robots containing electroactive polymers. Mechanisms consisting of a typical electroactive polymer gel containing poly 2 -acrylamido -2- methylpropane sulfonic acid (PAMPS), named ’gel robots’, have been designed, developed, and controlled experimentally. We faced a common problem called, the degrees-of-freedom problem, namely controlling many points on the gel surface with a small number of inputs. In order to solve the problem, we once reduced the number of inputs to one, and discovered that wave-shape pattern evolves for the beam-shaped gel even in a constant uniform electric field. This method makes use of the pattern formation. Wave-shaped gels with varying curvature are obtained by switching the polarity of a spatially uniform electric field. The method is verified through experiments which are carefully designed based on numerical simulations.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ISER
• Authors: Mihoko Otake, Yoshihiko Nakamura, Masayuki Inaba, Hirochika Inoue
• Keywords: Electroactive Polymer, Electroactive Polymer Gel, ISER 2004, Robotics, Uniform Electric field