Development of impact-type rotary actuator and application for MEMS microrobot by bare chip IC of hardware neuron model

Abstract

This paper proposes an impact-type microelectro mechanical systems (MEMS) rotary actuator and application for a millimeter-scale MEMS microrobot. The rotational motion of the actuator was generated by vibration of a multilayer piezoelectric element. The size of the fabricated actuator was 1.0 mm × 4.4 mm × 3.2 mm. The fabricated actuator was controlled by the pulse-type hardware neuron model (P-HNM) as the biomimetics technology, and it was integrated in a CMOS IC. The maximum rotational speed was 37.5 rpm when an applied neuron frequency was 39.6 kHz and an input voltage was 3.48 V. The actuator showed the low power consumption of 96.4 mW. The fabricated actuator and the fabricated control circuit that included the P-HNM were built in the MEMS microrobot. The size of the fabricated microrobot was 4.0 mm × 4.6 mm × 4.8 mm.