Abstract
A polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gel actuator shows great potential because of such positive characteristics as movement in the air, large deformation, and being lightweight. We have proposed a structure of a contraction type actuator and investigated various characteristics of this actuator. In order to use this actuator as a control element, we propose a mathematical model. Based on these results, we develop a position feedback control method of the actuator and investigate the validity of the control method in this paper.
