IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics

Robust stability of controlled mechanical systems is often obtained using collocated actuator-sensor-pairs. Collocation enables the implementation of a passive control law, which is robustly stable, irrespective of structural modeling errors. Within the context of vibration control, this knowledge is used to obtain robust active damping. However, collocated control is inherently in terms of "local... View full abstract»

Due to the demand for higher accuracy and lower acoustic noise levels, there is a growing interest for active vibration suppression in industrial application. Many control concepts have been proposed in this field that are suited to introduce damping in systems with a large number of modes. However, tuning is often focussed on reduction of one dominant mode. Such control approaches are less transp... View full abstract»

Homogeneous electrorheological (ER) fluid is a smart fluid whose appearance viscous coefficient can be controlled by applying an electric field. Therefore, the application of this fluid can create a damping device in a mechanical system. However, the ER effect of the fluid is easily changed by shear rate or temperature variation. In this study, a viscous coefficient control method using a variable... View full abstract»

A high-performance compact micromanipulation system is presented. The system, called the microgripper microrobot on chip (MMOC), was developed at Laboratoire d'Automatique de Besancon (LAB), France. Two main parts in the MMOC design of the MMOC are discussed: 1) the piezoactuator and 2) the end-effectors. The micromanipulator is partially fabricated in a clean room and the piezoactuator system has... View full abstract»

This paper presents theoretical and experimental results concerning a feedback control system employing a Terfenol-D-based smart actuator. Such magnetostrictive devices exhibit significant hysteresis, which, under some conditions, can generate self-sustained periodic oscillations in the control loop. The paper proposes a general procedure to find these conditions and to compute this periodic solut... View full abstract»

In this paper, the application of high control authority piezostack actuators (PSAs) for active vibration control of large-scale flexible structures is studied. The idea is to add PSAs at appropriate locations of a flexible structure in order to strengthen its stiffness characteristics. In this regard, a flexible link of a macro-micro manipulator system actuated with PSAs is considered. The design... View full abstract»

In this paper, we develop a complete mathematical model of a shape memory alloy (SMA) wire actuated by an electric current and a bias spring. The operation of the SMA actuator involves different physical phenomena, such as heat transfer, phase transformation with temperature hysteresis, stress-strain variations and electrical resistance variation accompanying the phase transformation. We model eac... View full abstract»

This paper presents the classical Preisach hysteresis modeling and tracking control of a curved pre-stressed piezoceramic patch actuator system with severe hysteresis. The actuator is also flexible with very small inherent damping. It has potential applications in active antennas. A series of tests are conducted to study the hysteresis properties of the piezoceramic actuator system. The numerical ... View full abstract»

Internal combustion engine thermal management system functionality can be enhanced through the introduction of smart thermostat valves and variable speed electric pumps and fans. The traditional automotive cooling system components include a wax based thermostat valve and crankshaft driven water pump. However, servo-motor driven valves, pumps, and fans can better regulate the engine's coolant flui... View full abstract»

The automation of the excavation process has a huge potential in many industries that require earth removal. The online estimation of soil parameters is an important requirement for developing an impedance controller architecture for automated excavation strategies. This paper presents a fast and robust technique for the experimental identification of soil. This technique, based on the Newton-Raph... View full abstract»

An operator representing the inverse dynamics of hysteretic effects inherent to piezoceramic actuators is used to enhance the tracking accuracy of a piezoceramic-driven positioning system when subject to dynamic reference input signals covering a wide frequency range. An open-loop tracking controller and a closed-loop tracking controller are developed based on the new inverse algorithm and are exp... View full abstract»

Piezoelectric materials have long been used as sensors and actuators, however their use as electrical generators is less established. A piezoelectric power generator has great potential for some remote applications such as in vivo sensors, embedded MEMS devices, and distributed networking. Such materials are capable of converting mechanical energy into electrical energy, but developing piezoelectr... View full abstract»

This paper focuses on robust dynamic identification of robots with set membership uncertainty. The error, taken additive on model output (input motor torque), is only assumed to be bounded. Three bounded-error recursive algorithms are implemented to outer-bound the solution parameter set with ellipsoids or parallelotopes. Experimental results are presented for a two degrees-of-freedom SCARA robot. View full abstract»