nderwater had escalated the research and development of
Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) since 1990 [1]. In
general IPMC is a bending actuator made of ion exchangeable
polymer membranes which responses to external electric
stimulation. Owing to its beneficial properties such as light
weight, bio-compatibility and its capability to be used
underwater make it more preferable actuator especially for
small underwater robot. On top of that, IPMC has specific
advantages over other smart materials such as Shape Memory
Alloys (SMA) and Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT). IPMC has
superior response speed over SMA which is important
characteristic of excellence actuator. In the other hand IPMC is
more suitable for small-size robot due to its lower power
consumption than PZT [2].
To suit certain application needs, many control design have
been developed in these past 10 years which mainly focus on
feedback based closed loop control. By introducing feedback
control, Mallavarapu and Leo successfully reduced overshoot
and settling time of IPMC open loop response [3]. From there,
traditional PID controller until most advanced model adaptive
control algorithm based on nonlinear control-oriented model
and quantitative feedback theory had been implemented to
achieve robust control of the IPMC [4-6]. However, while
excellent control had been achieved, there is still size limitation
if intended control system setup is going to be applied in smallsize
movable application. For example, normal size DAQ
device and feedback sensor such as laser sensor are too bulky
for controlling and analysing small autonomous device. There
were several attempts to minimize the size of feedback sensor
by replacing the traditional laser sensor with integration of
IPMC and PVDF films. For the first time Chen, Kwon and Tan
successfully manage to regulate/track IPMC actuation
displacement and record the force output simultaneously using
IPMC/PVDF combination [7]. Besides that, integration with
strain gage also had been proposed for compact setup [8]. But
there is no effort to reduce the size of DAQ hardware while
analysing and controlling IPMC actuator.
In this paper, we presented a small, cheap, easy to acquire
yet reliable open-source microcontroller called Arduino
(Fig. 1) to replace the normally bulky and expensive DAQ
device for IPMC analysis and control targeting small scale and
autonomous system application. Simultaneous data logging
analysis and real time control experiment can be done without
great hassle with Arduino microcontroller. We demonstrate
control of single IPMC actuator by PID controller using
MATLAB/Simulink Arduino Input Output (ArduinoIO)
support package. Battery powered and Bluetooth embedded
system can be apply to Arduino later for wireless real time
control application using IDE software after all parameters and
uncertainties are being cleared.