PI-funnel and inverse hysteresis compensation cascade control of smart soft dielectric elastomer actuator

Smart soft dielectric elastomer actuators(SSDEAs)possess wide applications in soft robotics due to their properties similar to natural muscles,including large deformation ratio,high energy density,and fast response speed.However,the complicated asymmetric and rate-dependent hysteresis property,creep property and quadratic input property of the SSDEA pose enormous challenges to its dynamic modeling and motion control.In this paper,first,we construct the dynamic model of the SSDEA by connecting a square module,a one-sided Prandtl–Ishlinskii(OSPI)model and a linear system in series to describe the above properties.The key and innovative aspect of the dynamic modeling lies in cascading the square module in series with the OSPI model to construct the asymmetric hysteresis model.Subsequently,a PI-funnel and inverse hysteresis compensation(PIFIHC)cascade control method of the SSDEA is proposed to actualize its tracking control objective.By performing the inversion operation on the asymmetric hysteresis model,the inverse hysteresis compensation controller(IHCC)is designed to compensate the asymmetric hysteresis property and quadratic input property of the SSDEA.In addition,a PI-funnel controller is designed to cascade with the IHCC to construct the PIFIHC cascade controller to obtain a good tracking performance.Then,the stability analysis of the PIFIHC cascade control system of the SSDEA is performed to theoretically prove that the tracking error can be controlled within the performance funnel and the steady-state error converges to zero.Finally,several practical tracking control experiments of the SSDEA are conducted,and RRMSEs are less than 2.30%for all experiments.These experimental results indicate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed PIFIHC cascade control method of the SSDEA.