Active Disturbance Rejection Control for Precise Position Tracking of Ionic Polymer–Metal Composite Actuators

Active disturbance rejection control method that can actively compensate nonlinear model uncertainties and unpredictable external disturbances is proposed for an accurate position tracking of an ionic polymer-metal composite actuator. An empirical model of the electroactive polymer actuator is constructed by fitting the step response of the actuator. Experimental results show that the present active disturbance rejection control scheme can substantially improve the control performance in the tracking of various reference motions including step, sinusoidal, trapezoidal, and sawtooth wave profiles. The proposed scheme offers an innovative solution for the position tracking of an ionic polymer-metal composite actuator with highly nonlinear dynamics.