Novel mobile piezoelectric micro robots driven by traveling wave

Abstract

Novel construction of mobile piezoelectric micro robots have been presented. The construction of the robots, including the (acrylic or polylactide) frame body and the (PZT) piezoelectric beam, is simple and can be easily shrunk to small size. The volume can be less than a size of few cm3 and the weight about tens of grams. In contrast to general mobile micro robots, the actuating mechanism of the robots is piezoelectric bimorph beam and the driving principle is the traveling-wave as drive source to actuate the robots. Experimental characterization is used to study the influence of key parameters on the performance of the micro robot. The robots can move straightly and rotates counterclockwise or clockwise, respectively. The speeds of the robots are dependent on the substrate (material, hardness and roughness), the payload, the driving voltage and the driving frequency. For demonstration, one of the robots which is made of acrylic material, the volume is about 10cm3 and the weight is 12.1g, moves straightly at 20 mm/s and rotates at 10 °/s on a smooth glass substrate without extra payload at a driving voltage of 50V and a frequency of 175Hz.