Massively parallel actuation

The paper examines the design and control opportunities presented by systems with large numbers of small, two-state actuators acting in parallel. An array of two-state actuators, i.e., a bundle of binary actuators, can be regarded as a simplified model of biological muscle. The development of micro-electromechanical systems has shown a great potential for building mechanical elements in a very small scale. However, there are some other issues for integrating a parallel array system that cannot be solved by advances of material research alone. From the mechanical designer´s point of view, large numbers of active elements have to be deployed at appropriate locations in the system. For control purposes, if a binary system is intended, the mathematical model can be very different from that of hyper-redundant manipulators. In addition to theoretical development, two experiments, one for investigating static problems and one for investigating dynamic problems, are also described