Development of Haptic SMA Actuators for Mobility Applications

In everyday mobility, mechatronic systems mainly use optical and acoustic communication paths to send information to road users. The perception of these signals can be hampered by disturbances (e.g., general traffic noise) but also by intentional communication signals (e.g., a telephone conversation). As an alternative, tactile-haptic information channels are conceivable which can generate natural and intuitive signals for warning or status information via force generation onto the user’s body. To generate these actoric stimuli, shape memory alloys are used as controlled, lightweight and noiseless actuators in the "SmartHaptics" project. The special focus of the development lies on the reliability of the SMA actuators and scenarios concerning the load interactions which can be applied accidently on the actuators by the users of the haptic devices. The publication lists two application scenarios that shed light on the topic from the design and control point of view up to further transfer potentials.