Electroactive Polymer Actuator design for space applications

In order to achieve a distributed actuation in robotics and automation a novel soft actuator technology is being sought worldwide. One of the candidate technologies is based on Electroactive Polymers (EAP). The research to be done in the field of EAP actuators should cover four issues: material improvement, characterization and modeling, actuator design, and applications simulation. Advances on the materials characterization and EAP actuator design are presented in this paper. Two types of Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) samples were synthesized according to published methods, both of them based on the ion conducting membrane NAFION: Gold-NAFION, and Platinum-NAFION composites. In order to measure the electromechanical properties of the material a specific characterization bench was designed and constructed. The design of the EAP Unit Tester allows real time monitoring of the following properties of EAP materials: deformation, power consumption, temperature and coating state. In addition, two types of signals can be applied to the material: electrical signals and force loads signals. All the parameters can be monitored simultaneously. An EAP actuator design methodology, using ionic EAP fibers as actuation unit is also presented. The bioinspired methodology allows designing large actuators by connecting several EAP actuation units following a set of formulas and strategies. The designer can optimize the actuator design for a particular application. Although the method is only valid for EAP fibers (e.g. Conducting Polymer fibers), future adaptation of the methodology will allow using other EAP materials such as IPMC.