Compared with traditional actuation materials, such as piezoelectric, ferroelectric and conducting polymer materials which suffered from low flexibility, high driving voltages and low energy efficiency, graphene exhibits outstanding mechanical, electrical, optical properties and chemical stability, which made it a good candidate for actuation materials. In this review, the recent progress in gr...

An electrostatic actuator is designed to move a 1 mm mirror, 58 μm out of plane at 25 volts. Large out-of-plane displacement is obtained from repulsive forces generated on four sets of comb drive fingers attached to the mirror plate in the middle. The proposed actuator is a customized design of a previous study for low voltage applications. The static modeling of the actuator was performed usin...

the presence of van der waals (vdw) force can lead to mechanical instability in freestanding nano-scale actuators. most of the previous researches in this area have exclusively focused on modeling the instability in actuators with one actuating components. while, less attention has been paid to actuators consist of two actuating components. herein, the effect of the vdw force on the instability...

INTRODUCTION Recently, the study of single unit spherical actuators that can perform multi degree of freedom movements has increased. The spherical actuator is an electric machine that is able to tilt its shaft on multiple degrees of freedom using electromagnetic force. Various types of spherical motors have been developed. Lee et al.[1-4] devised variable reluctance spherical actuators. They r...

The most rational approach to fabricate soft robotics is the implementation of soft actuators. Conventional soft electromechanical actuators exhibit linear or circular deformation, based on their design. This study presents the use of conjugated polymers, Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) to locally vary ion permeability of the ionic electroactive polymer actua...

Series Elastic Actuators provide many benefits in force control of robots in unconstrained environments. These benefits include high force fidelity, extremely low impedance, low friction, and good force control bandwidth. Series Elastic Actuators employ a novel mechanical design architecture which goes against the common machine design principal of “stiffer is better”. A compliant element is pl...

Series Elastic Actuators provide many benefits in force control of robots in unconstrained environments. These benefits include high force fidelity, extremely low impedance, low friction, and good force control bandwidth. Series Elastic Actuators employ a novel mechanical design architecture which goes against the common machine design principal of “stiffer is better”. A compliant element is pl...