HRA - High Redundancy Actuation Overview

This paper presents an overview of recent research into a new method of providing fault tolerant actuators for high-integrity and safety-critical applications. The High Redundancy Actuator (HRA) uses a large number of small actuation elements to make up a single actuator. It provides superior reliability and efficiency over current technology, by configuring and controlling the elements so that faults are inherently accommodated. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate feasible active and passive fault tolerant control.