Autor: Steffen Hau

Within the concepts of Industry 4.0, the term “Smart Factory” stands for the creation of effective production environments through digitalization and cyber-physical systems. Most manufacturers plan to make their manufacturing systems more automated, flexible and adaptive. In the course of these efforts, intelligent materials are increasingly brought into focus. Combined actuator and sensory properties enable the construction of lightweight and compact multifunctional actuator-sensor systems that are operated in an energy-efficient, noise-free and emission-free manner. This makes them appropriate for building networked systems. Shape memory alloys (SMAs) and dielectric elastomers (DEs) are particularly suitable for building intelligent actuators, and are presented in this article alongside several use cases.