Piezoelectric Micromotors for Microrobots

Abstract

Mobile robots are able to carry more and more intelligence (and in smaller packages) onboard everyday. Now we would like to match the brawn of our robots to the same scale as the brain. Towards this end, we have fabricated some small, a few millimeters in diameter, piezoelectric motors using ferroelectric thin films. These motors consist of two pieces: a stator and a rotor. The stationary stator includes a piezoelectric film in which we induce bending in the form of a traveling wave. Anything which sits atop the stator is propelled by the wave. A small glass lens placed upon the stator becomes the spinning rotor. Piezoelectric micromotors overcome the problems currently associated with electrostatic micromotors such as low torque, friction, and the need for high voltage excitation.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA234423

Entities

People

  • Anita M. Flynn
  • Lee S. Tavrow
  • Rodney A. Brooks
  • Stephen F. Bart

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Autonomy
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acoustic Waves
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Capacitance
  • Ceramic Materials
  • Control Systems
  • Dielectric Permittivity
  • Dielectrics
  • Electric Fields
  • Energy
  • Excitation
  • Fabrication
  • Materials
  • Materials Processing
  • Materials Science
  • Thin Films
  • Traveling Waves
  • Waves

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Nanofabrication and Microfabrication.
  • Robotics and Automation.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Autonomous Systems
  • Autonomy