RT journal article
T1 A Portable Real-Time Test Bench for Dielectric Elastomer Actuators
A1 Sohlbach, Lukas
A1 Bhatta, Sushil
A1 Pérez Peña, Fernando
A1 Schmidt, Karsten
A2 Ingeniería en AutomáticaElectrónica, Arquitectura y Redes de Computadores
K1 dielectric elastomer actuators
K1 dielectric elastomer transducers
K1 soft robots
K1 artificial muscles
K1 test bench
K1 real-time
AB Recently, a significant amount of research has been devoted to soft robots. Artificialmuscles belong to the most important components of soft robots. Dielectric elastomer actuators(DEAs) represent the technology that comes closest to the capabilities of a natural muscle, makingthem the best candidates for artificial muscles in robotics and prosthetics applications. To developthese applications, an analysis of DEAs in a test bench must be possible. It is important that theenvironmental conditions are known, and all components are specified, which is not the case inmost publications. This paper focuses on the development of a real-time test bench for DEAs whichprovides environmental conditions and all components that are specified. Its goal is to open up theresearch field of dielectric elastomer actuators or soft robots. The stacked DEA used is poweredby a high-voltage amplifier, which can be controlled via a real-time block diagram environmenttogether with a data acquisition (DAQ) device. The response of the actuator is measured with a lasertriangulation sensor. Furthermore, information about the applied voltage, the operating current, thetemperature, and the humidity are collected. It was demonstrated that the selected laser sensor is asuitable device for this application. Moreover, it was shown that the selected high-voltage amplifieris adequate to power a DEA. However, the DAQ is not fast enough to measure the actuator current.It was demonstrated that housing keeps environmental conditions constant, is transportable, andoffers the flexibility to investigate different DEAs.
PB MDPI
SN 2075-1702
YR 2023
FD 2023
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10498/32046
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10498/32046
LA eng
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Cádiz
RD 10-may-2026