No abstract

Bimorph-type bending actuators have been widely used in many applications as converters of electric input to mechanical motion, or vice versa. In this paper a new piezoelectric model of a multilayer piezoelectric cantilever is obtained, and the analytic expressions for the curvature, displacement and tip-deflection of the multilayer structure are derived in the static state. With the use of this model and the solution, the tip-deflections of the piezoelectric bimorph cantilever in different working situations are compared and the effect of the metal electrodes on the tip-deflection of the cantilever is considered. The above-mentioned methods and conclusions can be used for optimized design of PZT cantilever structure.

No abstract

Soft crawling robots have attracted considerable attentions due to their merits of flexibility, safety, cost, and their unique applications that are not available for the rigid robots. However, poor precision resulting from the strongly nonlinear reconfiguration prevents such soft robots from wider applications. This paper reported a novel SMA spring driven soft crawling robot with feet of constant curvature, and the constant height of the feet during crawling enabled effective alleviation of the nonlinearity of the robotic reconstruction. An analytical static model for the step length of the robot’s crawling gait was built based on 11 independent design parameters, and the influential significance of each parameter was parametrically studied based on the static model. These parameters were then qualitatively classified as strong, medium, and weak factors based on their influences on the theoretical step length of the crawling robot, among which the minimum and the maximum bending angles and the length of the silicone body functioned as the dominant factors. This work provides an efficient approach to the design, prediction, evaluation, and optimization of such soft crawling robots for diverse application surroundings.