Feasibility Study of Arduino Microcontroller Usage for IPMC Actuator Control

Abstract

This paper investigates the usage of Arduino microcontroller to control closed loop of IPMC actuator response designed for compact underwater application. We demonstrate control of single Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) actuator by PID controller using MATLAB/Simulink Arduino Input Output (ArduinoIO) support package. Experimental results show that the microcontroller able to differentiate response speed and stability of IPMC actuator with different thicknesses. Based on Arduino data acquisition results, thinner IPMC (t1) has more than 5 times respond speed than thicker IPMC (t2). However, IPMC t1 has lower steady-state stability (higher noise) compared to IPMC t2 due to IPMC actuator mechanism factors and current setup limitation for Arduino microcontroller. Therefore, added with further improvements in term of analog read sampling rate and analog write resolution, Arduino microcontroller can accurately control and analyse the IPMC actuator, thus manage to replace expensive and bulky current DAQ hardware.