Development of A Monolithic Shape Memory Alloy Manipulator

The essential steps and issues in the development of a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) based multi-degrees-of-freedom monolithic manipulator are reflected upon. The use of Direct Metal Deposition (DMD) will be described for the manufacture of the manipulator’s structure followed by the exploration of the feasibility of the “self-sensing” functionality of the structure as a basis for the manipulator’s control. Finally, a synopsis of a new mathematical model of the kinetics of the temperature-induced phase transformation that was developed and its experimental verification will be given and shown that the analytical predictions closely follow the experimentally measured responses.