Study of the Velocity and Direction of Piezoelectric Robot Driven by Traveling Waves

Abstract

Self-running piezoelectric robots have the advantages of being low cost, high load ratio and fast speed of operation, as well as showing few limitations in confined spaces or for underwater applications. Controlling the speed of motion of such robots by adjusting the Standing Wave Ratio (SWR) along the vibration plate of the robot is important. Compared to the conventional dual-mode excitation method which is based on the adjustment of the excitation frequency, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">f</i> , a novel SWR-based control method, using the adjustment of the temporal phase shift, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">θ</i> , has been first derived by the authors. It has been found that the travelling wave component could be maximised using both methods, either by setting the value of <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">f</i> to the root mean square of the two adjacent modal frequencies, or by programming <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">θ</i> to have a sum of π when added to the spatial phase difference. It can be seen that using the ‘θ-based’ traveling wave control method, smoother motion and higher resolution of the motion speed is achieved. In this research, by using the novel <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">θ</i> -based method to drive the robot, its motion characteristics, such as voltage-speed, load capacity and ability to move on different surface materials, have been tested through a series of experiments carried out and reported.