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Advances in soft robotic systems enable to create devices that can elegantly deal with complex environments and gently interface with humans. However, much progress in actuator technologies is required for adoption in practical and commercial scale-up implementations. An helical dielectric elastomer actuator (HDEA) can be a promising solution that fits in these applications. Nevertheless, in order to move forward from theory to practice, many aspects still need to be developed and advanced. For instance, current works may be insufficient to advance the topics in control systems applied to actuator geometry, in relation to relevant segments such as material synthesis and design for manufacturing. It is apparent that absence of a more complete and generalized dynamics model of an HDEA limits rapid engineering progress in this field. In some previous research, important contributions of electromechanical model were proposed for linear and nonlinear hyperelastic materials. However, other effects such as viscoelasticity and hysteresis in the strain-voltage relation were often neglected. This paper presents the dynamical model derivation of an HDEA using lumped parameters to model the electrical and mechanical behavior of the actuator. Furthermore, it covers the most imperative effects embedded in the dynamics of the actuator. In this work, the dielectric elastomeric transducer is modeled with VHB 4910 acrylic due to its well-documented material parameters needed in the non-linear strain energy functions.
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