In order to fully harness the potential of dielectric elastomer actu-ators (DEAs) in soft robots, advanced control methods are need-ed. An important groundwork for this is the development of a control-oriented model that can adequately describe the underly-ing dynamics of a DEA. A common feature of existing models is that always custom-made DEAs were investigated. This makes the modelling process easier, as all specifications and the struc-ture of the actuator are well known. In the case of a commercial actuator, however, only the information from the manufacturer is available and must be checked or completed during the modelling process. The aim of this paper is to explore how a commercial stacked silicone-based DEA can be modelled and how complex the model should be to properly replicate the features of the actu-ator. The static description has demonstrated the suitability of Hooke's law. In the case of dynamic description, it is shown that no viscoelastic model is needed for control-oriented modelling. However, if all features of the DEA are considered, the general-ized Kelvin-Maxwell model with three Maxwell elements shows good results, stability and computational efficiency.

翻译：为充分挖掘介电弹性体致动器（DEA）在软体机器人中的潜力，需要先进的控制方法。其重要基础是开发能够准确描述DEA底层动态特性的面向控制模型。现有模型的共同特点是均针对定制化DEA进行研究。这简化了建模过程，因为致动器的所有规格参数与结构都已知。然而对于商用致动器，建模时仅能获取制造商提供的信息，且需在建模过程中进行验证或补充。本文旨在探究如何对商用堆叠型硅基DEA进行建模，以及模型应达到何种复杂度才能准确复现致动器特性。静态描述验证了胡克定律的适用性。在动态描述中，研究表明面向控制建模无需采用粘弹性模型。但若需考虑DEA的所有特征，采用含三个麦克斯韦单元的广义开尔文-麦克斯韦模型能展现良好的效果、稳定性及计算效率。