Dielectric Electro Active Polymer Incremental Actuator Driven by Multiple High-Voltage Bi-directional DC-DC Converters

This paper presents driving circuit for a recently invented dielectric electro active polymer (DEAP) incremental actuator. The basic operation of such an actuator is bioinspired from the movement of an inchworm. The actuator consists of three electrically isolated, and mechanically connected capacitive sub-actuators. It needs to be driven by three high voltage (similar to 2.5 kV) DC-DC converters, to achieve the linear incremental motion. The topology used for this application is a bi-directional flyback DC-DC converter. The control of the incremental actuator involves, implementation of digital controller used for controlling charge and discharge sequences of the individual sub-actuators, and monitoring and adjustment of the output voltages of three high voltage DC-DC converters to provide over-voltage protection capability. Three power stages of the proposed converter were experimentally tested. The experimental results and efficiency measurements are shown.