Distributed Stochastic Control of MEMS-PZT Cellular Actuators with Broadcast Feedback

A biologically-inspired approach is proposed for the coordination of a vast number of "cellular actuators." Each cellular actuator has a decision-making unit that changes the transition probability depending on the broadcasted control signal from a centralized feedback controller. Although there is no deterministic coordination among the vast number of cellular actuator, the sum of the displacements of the cellular actuators can track a desired trajectory. We propose a design of transition probability that guarantees the convergence of the expectation of this ensemble. We show that broadcast signal needs to contain the positioning error but other information is unnecessary, and robustness against failure is guaranteed for any percentage of inactive (dead) cells. A MEMS-PZT cellular actuator with strain amplifying mechanism is also presented