Compliant Bistable Dielectric Elastomer Actuators for Binary Mechatronic Systems

In this paper, a new all-polymer actuation approach for binary mechatronic systems is demonstrated. The technology consists of using Dielectric Elastomer actuators in a binary fashion by coupling them with a properly designed compliant structure. Here, a bistable actuator based around the “flip-flop” concept is implemented in which two antagonistic actuators switch a compliant truss between two stable positions. This prototype shows promising performance with output forces ranging from 1 to 3.5 N and displacements of 30% of the actuator dimension.