Optical remote control of an electromagnetic digital actuator

In this paper, an optical remote control of a digital actuator array is introduced. Driven by a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based systems, the control permits an electromagnetic actuator to move in response to the reception of serial displacement orders through a wireless optical link. This optical communication is based on a laser diode for emitting the different orders and a selective photodiode for the reception of them. The paper presents a serial data transmission link using one particular wavelength in order to control an actuator along its two displacement axes. This work is structured into two parts: The evaluation of the optical link performances, and the demonstration of the effective remote control of an elementary digital actuator.