Open-loop control of Ionic Polymer Metal Composite (IPMC) based underwater actuator using a network of neural oscillator

In this paper, we introduce the open-loop motion planning and control strategy for an underwater vehicle actuated by a soft artificial muscle actuator. The artificial muscle used for this underwater application is an ionic polymer metal composite (IPMC) which can generate bending motion in aquatic environments. In this research, the double ring structured nonlinear neural oscillator is proposed for generating undulatory motions in the water. The overall dynamic model of the flexible IPMC actuator including its fluid interaction terms is used for the motion planning and open-loop controller design. The IPMC used in this study is a patterned or segmented type where the electrode surface of the actuator is encoded such that each segment can be controlled independently for effectively generating an undulatory motion. Computer simulations show that the proposed neural oscillator based controller can be effectively used for the underwater locomotion applications, and can be extended to the closed-loop controller where the precise maneuver is needed in the unstructured aquatic environments. Experimental results are also presented to validate the proposed scheme.