Abstract
Microrobotics is a rapidly growing field with promising applications in microsurgery and microassembly. A challenge in these systems is providing power and control signals to the robot. This project explores crawling robots that are powered and controlled through a global mechanical vibration field. Structures within the robot will cause it to respond to particular frequencies with different motion modalities. A prototype, dubbed the “jitterbot”, was cut out of a 0.75 mm sheet of steel using electric discharge machining (EDM), and has a total footprint of approximately 30 mm × 20 mm in the xy-plane. The “robot” has a tripod body (8 mm × 16 mm) with three small legs, and two suspended masses that are designed for specific resonance frequencies. The robot was tested on a plate that was vibrated vertically at frequencies ranging from 20 to 2,000 Hz. For particular resonant frequencies, the robot moves forward and turns in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Finite element modeling confirms that the mechanism for motion is a rocking mode that is influenced by two arms that are suspended mass springs tuned to different frequencies. This lays the groundwork for further miniaturization.
Highlights
Microrobotics has promising applications in microsurgery and microassembly [1,2]
Our experimental results are consistent with finite element modeling predictions, for the higher frequency rocking modes
With the two motion primitives of turning clockwise with translation and counter-clockwise with translation, the Jitterbot can theoretically be moved to any arbitrary point by altering the frequency of the vibration field
Summary
Microrobotics has promising applications in microsurgery and microassembly [1,2]. A challenge in these systems is power and communication between the macro-world and the robot. One approach is to Micromachines 2011, 2 place the robots into a global power field. Such power fields can be electrostatic [3], magnetic [4,5], or vibrational or ―seismic‖ [6,7,8]. Compared to electrostatic and magnetic actuation, vibrational actuation does not perform as well at the microscopic level because of the dominance at that scale of surface forces—such as friction—over inertial forces. Magnetic microrobots are already effectively leveraging existing magnetic imaging systems for control and visualization [9]. Vibrational actuation might be adapted to use existing ultrasonic imaging systems, which are more affordable and less hazardous than magnetic imaging systems
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