Design of Extended Kalman Filter for a Shape Memory Alloy Manipulator

Abstract

This paper presents an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) for estimation of the state variables of a single degree of freedom rotary manipulator actuated by Shape Memory Alloy (SMA). A state space model for the SMA manipulator is presented. The model includes nonlinear dynamics of the manipulator, constitutive model of Shape Memory Alloy, and the electrical and heat transfer behavior of SMA wire. In the experimental setup, angular position of the arm is the only state variable that is measured. The other state variables of the system are arm’s angular velocity, SMA wire’s stress, temperature and the Martensite factor, which are not available experimentally due to measurement difficulties. Hence, a model-based state estimator that works with noisy measurements is presented based on the Extended Kalman Filter. This estimator predicts the state vector at each time step and corrects its prediction based on the angular position of the arm which can be measured experimentally. The state variables collected through model simulations are also used to evaluate the performance of the EKF. Several EKF simulations are presented that show accurate, and robust performance of the estimator for different types of inputs.