Low-voltage-driven soft actuators

Artificial annelid robot driven by soft actuators.

The annelid provides a biological solution of effective locomotion adaptable to a large variety of unstructured environmental conditions. The undulated locomotion of the segmented body in the annelid is characterized by the combination of individual motion of the muscles distributed along the body, which has been of keen interest in biomimetic investigation. In this paper, we present an annelid...

Printing low-voltage dielectric elastomer actuators

Low Input Voltage Switching Amplifiers for Piezoelectric Actuators

The Inertially Stabilized Rifle is a new stabilized rifle system that can eliminate the disturbances induced by the shooter. Recurve actuator is used in this system to provide the precise movement of the rifle barrel. In such a portable device, only low voltage electrical sources are available yet the piezoelectric actuator needs high voltage to drive the actuator. The actuators consume little ...

Polypyrrole Soft Actuators

A High Efficiency Low-Voltage Soft Switching DC–DC Converter for Portable Applications

This paper presents a novel control method to improve the efficiency of low-voltage DC-DC converters at light loads. Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) converters have poor efficiencies at light loads, while pulse frequency modulation (PFM) control is more efficient for the same cases. Switching losses constitute a major portion of the total power loss at light loads. To decrease the switching losses...