This paper presents a new actuator and sensor fault reconstruction scheme for Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) systems, based on a sliding mode observer. Two separate observer schemes for actuator and sensor fault reconstruction are presented. For the design of the actuator fault reconstruction scheme, the varying input distribution matrix has been factorized into a fixed and a varying component....

In this paper, two different piezoelectric microactuator designs are studied. The corresponding devices were designed for optimal in-plane displacements and different high flexibilities, proven by electrical and optical characterization. Both actuators presented two dominant vibrational modes in the frequency range below 1 MHz: an out-of-plane bending and an in-plane extensional mode. Neverthel...

In recent years, Japanese society has been aging, engendering a labor shortage of young workers. Robots are therefore expected to perform tasks such as rehabilitation, nursing elderly people, and day-to-day work support for elderly people. The pneumatic balloon actuator is a rubber artificial muscle developed for use in a robot hand in such environments. This actuator has a long stroke and a hi...

The term plasma actuator refers to an asymmetric arrangement of two electrodes (typically rectangular strips) separated by dielectric material that can be used as active flow control devices. A plasma actuator design consisting of an annular electrode array, the plasma synthetic jet actuator (PSJA), is experimentally investigated in this paper. This particular geometry creates a zero-net mass f...

Electrostatic comb-drive actuators have been developed and employed for many applications. However, side stability (side pull-in) limits the actuator stroke constraining its applications. Hence, extending the stable traveling range is an important issue for designing electrostatic comb-drive actuators. This study presents a novel cascade electrostatic comb-drive actuator. Instead of shifting th...

Development of reliable power-by-wire actuation systems for both aeronautical and space applications has been sought recently to eliminate hydraulic systems from aircraft and spacecraft and thus improve safety, efficiency, reliability, and maintainability. The Electrically Powered Actuation Design (EPAD) program was a joint effort between the Air Force, Navy, and NASA to develop and fly a serie...

Next-generation aircraft with a large number of actuators will require advanced control allocation methods to compute the actuator commands needed to follow desired trajectories while respecting system constraints. Previously, algorithms were proposed to minimize the l1 or l2 norms of the tracking error and of the actuator deflections. This paper discusses the alternative choice of the l1 norm,...

In this study we consider an active flow control actuator which was first investigated experimentally by Lachowicz et al. (1999a,b) and called ‘‘Jet and Vortex Actuator’’ (JaVA). The Fluent CFD software package has been used because of its ability to employ user-defined functions for specification of the unsteady boundary conditions and a sliding mesh interface for discretization of the moving ...

As a new type of intelligent material, magnetically shape memory alloy (MSMA) has a good performance in its applications in the actuator manufacturing. Compared with traditional actuators, MSMA actuator has the advantages as fast response and large deformation; however, the hysteresis nonlinearity of the MSMA actuator restricts its further improving of control precision. In this paper, an impro...

Osmotic actuation is a ubiquitous plant-inspired actuation strategy that has a very low power consumption but is capable of generating effective movements in a wide variety of environmental conditions. In light of these features, we aimed to develop a novel, low-power-consumption actuator that is capable of generating suitable forces during a characteristic actuation time on the order of a few ...