High sensitive and large area force plate for ground reaction force measurement of ant running

Abstract

This paper reports on a MEMS force plate for measurement of total ground reaction force (GRF) of an ant during running. To achieve both high force sensitivity and ensuring area for ant running with several steps, the MEMS force plate consisted of two cantilever chips and one plate which were fabricated separately. The force plate was designed to measure vertical directional force with the force resolution under 0.5 μΝ. Using the fabricated MEMS force plate, we measured the GRF of Messor aciculatus. The results showed that the fluctuation of the ground reaction force was 3.7 % to the body weight of the ant.