The past decade has seen an increase in the use of smart materials in actuator design, notably for inclusion in active structures such as noise-reducing paneling or vibration-controlled buildings. Materials such as shape memory alloys (SMAs), piezoceramics, magnetostrictives and others all offer exciting new actuation possibilities. However, all of these materials present an interesting control...

This research studied the optimal design of Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) muscle wire bundle actuators. Current literature describes the use of multiple muscle wires placed in parallel to increase the lifting capabilities of an SMA actuator, which however, is limited to wires of like-diameter. A constrained optimization problem was formulated, with constraints on the maximum number of wires, voltage...

A new prosthetic hand with a fixed thumb and four fingers actuated by Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) type artificial muscle has been developed in this paper. Different from typical geared motor, SMA actuator is lightweight and silent, however shows a little short stroke and small attracting force per each unit. In order to achieve enough output force and motion range of each finger, multiple SMA type...

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Thermally activated shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators are direct-driven and produce high power density with design versatility. However, beyond their linear actuation in spring forms there is little variety and their application in robotics is limited by the challenging characterization of the actuator. In this paper we introduce a novel low-profile torsional SMA actuator design, and its compr...

In this paper, the design and control of a novel shape memory alloy (SMA) actuator that possesses impressive payload lifting capabilities are presented. The actuator consists of 48 nickel-titanium SMA wires mechanically bundled in parallel forming one powerful artificial muscle. This new linear actuator can apply up to 100 lbf (445 N), which is approximately 300 times its weight, over a maximum...