Dielectric Elastomer Actuator And Its Verification In Humanoid Facial Experssion

With the development of smart materials,people accepted these smart materials gradually and made some research on them.Dielectric elastomer,a kind of electroactive polymers,have advantages of high energy density,large deformation,fast transformation,and low quality.These advantages attract many scientists drop in it and use them to design as various soft drives.Because its motion features are similar to human muscles,dielectric elastomer is mostly used in the field of "artificial muscles".Compared with rigid dirver,soft actuator has large advantages in human-computer interaction.They can keep operator's safety due to their soft body,and they have high adaptable ability toward the environment.They are capable of continuous deformation,and can be applied in a wide range.In this thesis,acrylic dielectric elastomer is studied,which have faster response speed and large energized deformation.We analyse the factors affecting the performance of dielectric elastomer,then do a research on manufacturing process of dielectric elastomer actuators.And then,we study the principle of facial expression of the human.Finally,we produce a dielectric elastomer actuator and put it in humanoid facial expression robot,and then we realize facial expression of raising eyebrows,which verificating feasibility of applying dielectric elastomer in facial micro-expression.The details of this thesis are as follow.In the performance study of dielectric elastomers,we use mathematical model exploring the performance of dielectric elastomers,which is based on the theory of stress and elastic energy.Then we do a series of experiments to explore how these factors affect the performance,which contain the electrode coating size,pre-stretch ratio,the density of fiber galss,and the size of dielectric elastomer.After experiment,we record experimental data and analyze them.The manufacturing process of the dielectric elastomer actuator is mainly introduced in detail,including the pre-stretching device and some detailed operations of the manufacturing process,and the summary of failure of the dielectric elastomer actuators.Based on formation mechanism of facial expressions,we design a program of using a dielectric elastomer actuator ot imitate the facial muscle to realize the raised eyebrow expression.Then introduce the production process of humanoid facial expression robot and the structure of realizing facial expression,and prepare to experiment.Finally,an experiment of realzing raised eyebrow is carried out,and the result is analyzed,which verificating feasibility of applying dielectric elastomer in facial micro-expression.