A Temperature-based Controller for a Shape Memory Alloy Actuator

This paper presents a robust nonlinear control that uses a state variable estimator for control of a single degree of freedom rotary manipulator actuated by shape memory alloy (SMA) wire. A model for SMA actuated manipulator is presented. The model includes nonlinear dynamics of the manipulator, a constitutive model of the shape memory alloy, and the electrical and heat transfer behavior of SMA wire. The current experimental setup allows for the measurement of only one state variable which is the angular position of the arm. Due to measurement difficulties, the other three state variables, arm angular velocity and SMA wire stress and temperature, cannot be directly measured. A model-based state estimator that works with noisy measurements is presented based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF). This estimator estimates the state vector at each time step and corrects its estimation based on the angular position measurements. The estimator is then used in a nonlinear and robust control algorithm based on variable structure control (VSC). The VSC algorithm is a control gain switching technique based on the arm angular position (and velocity) feedback and EKF estimated SMA wire stress and temperature. Using simulation it is shown that the state vector estimates help reduce or avoid the undesirable and inefficient overshoot problem in SMA one-way actuation control.