Miniaturized Twin-legged Robot with an Electromagnetic Oscillatory Actuator

摘要

There have been many studies on the moving mechanism of micro robots,such as stick-slip,inchworm like motion,and impact drive.Novel actuators like lead zirconate titanate (PZT),Shape Memory Alloy (SMA),magnetostrictive materials,electromagnetic actuators,electoractive polymers,ultrasonic linear motors,and dielectric elastomers are utilized to realize the moving mechanism.The use of a conventional electromagnetic actuator is unfavorable,because of a few drawbacks,such as generation of stray magnetic fields,hard to miniaturize to the millimeter scale because of 3D integration and a scaling law,and power consumption to maintain a certain position.This research presents a micro robot that uses an electromagnetic actuator customized and developed for micro robot.The electromagnetic actuator is designed from a Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) motor to overcome the drawbacks mentioned above.The developed robot is composed of two electromagnetic actuators.The overall size of the robot is 20 mm × 11 mm × 9 mm (length × height × width) and the weight is 3 g.The developed robot is able to move bidirectionally with a maximum moving speed of 15.76 mm.s-1 (0.79 body-length per second).The optimal conditions of an input signal are calculated theoretically and verified with experiments.