Project Details
Projekt
Cooperative elastomeric multi-actuator platform (CALMAR)
Applicants
Professor Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Maas; Professor Dr.-Ing. Uwe Marschner; Professor Dr.-Ing. Andreas Richter; Dr.-Ing. Ernst-Friedrich Markus Vorrath
Subject Area
Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 512586089
Collaborative multi-actuator systems will be important components for visionary future applications, such as robotics, medical appliances and advanced user interfaces. The potential range of use of such devices spans from the nanoscale, where they operate at a scale where many phenomena have their origin, to the micro- and macroscale. Conceptually, they vary considerably across the size scales. The larger they become, the more the technical requirements approach human capabilities. They should be able to independently realise complex sequences of movements and tasks, perceive their environment, and act autonomously according to the situation. Appropriately powerful robotic multi-actuator sensor structures are among the significant, barely solved technical challenges, which are considerably amplified for small-scale systems by the functional, technological, and integrative constraints of the size limitation. Sensors with the necessary sensitivities, suitable actuators, hardware and software for controlling or regulating information processing, and strategies for assembly and system integration are required. For conventional rigid robots for instance, this inevitably leads to a significant increase in the complexity of hardware and software and a corresponding deterioration in the energy and sustainability balance, because even more information processing electronics, sensors and actuators are required. In this project we will develop interconnected, distributed HASEL-DET-DES actuator modules that requires advanced methods. The classical process of product development and optimization through several cycles of design, prototyping and metrological investigations is no longer suitable. We will develop alternative simulation-based design methods that realize a large part of the development and optimization by a virtual design. The design methodology is aided by underlying the model hierarchy describing the system virtually at different abstraction levels. Base units, consisting of HASEL, DET or DES, are synergistically combined to single-actuator modules, which themselves represent sub-modules for the cooperative elastomeric multi-actuator platform (CALMAR), with the freedom to ensure several functionalities as cooperative behavior, multilevel actuation, multistability and inherent sensing of internal and external stimuli. It is designed with the help of structural and behavioural models. The influence of each parameter on the system behaviour can then be efficiently simulated to optimize the system for a desired behaviour. A holistic multivariable control strategy will offer minimum control inputs for well-defined system behaviour. By using a model-based toolbox to be developed, the optimum configuration for the respective application can be compiled from the available HASEL-DES-DEA base units and basic functions. Finally, the intended cooperative multi-actuator platform will be realised by additive manufacturing and investigated in detail.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
