New concepts for distributed actuators and their control

Recently decreasing costs for robots and control components have led to a broader acceptance of different kinds of robots. Hence various fields of application start to flourish. As this is especially true for the field of service robotics it is typically implying an increasing physical human-machine-interaction. In this case a soft appearance yields major benefits as it prevents injuries corresponding to an inherent safety of the system and in theory enables the robot to obtain virtually unlimited degrees of freedom. In this paper the possibilities of the use of shape memory alloys for distributed actuators will be discussed by reference to application examples and implications for the control of such systems will be pointed out in detail.