Locomotion Study of a Standing Wave Driven Piezoelectric Miniature Robot for Bi-Directional Motion

Abstract

In this paper, we developed a kinematic model for a legged piezoelectric miniature robot driven by standing wave. The robot consists of a piezoelectric bending actuator with rigidly attached legs. The kinematic model allows us to compute the velocity analytically so that the robot motion can be predicted. To construct the kinematic model, the behavior of the robot at the contact instances with the ground during the up and down stages is studied. A prototype is fabricated so as to verify our kinematic model experimentally, measured using a motion capture system. The result shows that the measured speed was in close agreement with what was predicted by our model.