Development of a 2DOF micromanipulation system with IPMC actuators

This paper presents the design and control of a novel 2 degree-of-freedom (2DOF) micromanipulator to facilitate the safe handling and manipulation of biological materials. The manipulator is driven by two IPMC actuators for each DOF and the system controller is adaptively tuned online using a model-free iterative feedback tuning (IFT) algorithm to adjust the controller parameters to optimize the system performance. A 2DOF controller structure was implemented for each axis of motion so both the disturbance rejection (DR) and set point (SP) response can be optimized, making the system ideal for operating in unknown environments. Simulations are presented which utilize an IPMC model and mechanical manipulator model to show the system performance has been improved by 37% for the DR and by 24% and 28% for SP in the horizontal and vertical direction respectively. Experimental results are also presented to validate the design and show the system can achieve outputs of up to 7° in both axes.