Identification of ionic polymer metal composite actuator employing fuzzy NARX model and Particle Swam Optimization

An ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) actuator is an Electro-Active Polymer (EAP) that bends in response to a small applied electrical field as a result of mobility of cations in the polymer network. This paper proposes a dynamic fuzzy Nonlinear Auto Regressive Exogenous (NARX) model for modeling and identifying the nonlinear behavior of on type IPMC actuator. Firstly, a set of open loop input voltage signals were applied to the IPMC in order to investigate the IPMC bending actuation. Consequently, a proper fuzzy NARX model was constructed and an identification scheme based on Particle Swam Optimization (PSO) algorithm was developed. Validation results proved the ability of proposed scheme to capture the bending behaviors of IPMC actuator.