A method to implement biomimetic control for a SMA springs array

Abstract

Artificial muscle works in a much different way from motor drive, and shows a good prospect of the application in intelligent devices and biomimetic robot fields. It is usually clustered and hard to control. This paper focus on the biomimetic control method of a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) springs array that has characteristics of artificial muscle. Material characteristics of SMA are firstly analyzed, and attached platform with a 5×3 SMA springs array prototype is then set up. Secondly, after analyzing the motor control behavior of skeletal muscle, this paper establishes a biomimetic method to control the signal and energy, and presents the design result of control system including a programmable logic controller (PLC) based control device, a configuration software based graphical user interface (GUI) and control programming. Experiment is finally designed to explore the responsiveness and stability of the control system, and output displacement and force of the SMA springs array are measured. The test result proves the feasibility and real time of this control method and device presented in this paper.