A bio-inspired piezoelectric motor with simple structured asymmetric stator

Abstract

A new type of micro rotary motor with a single piezoelectric stack actuator has been proposed, developed and tested. The conventional principle of elliptical motion is realized by a proposed mechanism which utilizes a Y-shaped stator and a ring rotor, and the biomimetic gait of an inchworm is achieved by integrating one piezoelectric stack actuator into the stator. The performance of the motor is predicted on the basis of computational simulation. An experimental setup was built to validate the working principles and evaluate the performance. Preliminary results have verified the working principle. Differences between the measured and predicted performances of the motor are analyzed.

Modeling and preliminary analysis of a miniaturized rotary motor driven by single piezoelectric stack actuator

“…Together with the authors' previous work (Zhou et al, 2014), we show here a simple way to achieve rotary motion based on inchworm locomotion principle. The motor has potential low speed with relatively high torque, which is suitable in case of direct actuation.…”

Mathematical model of inchworm locomotion

“…Some robots exhibit arching behavior but are not soft, often containing rigid segments connected by joints [18,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Further papers describing robots and other devices inspired by inchworm locomotion include [48][49][50][51][52]. Some robots resembling earthworms or caterpillars are used for purposes such as endoscopies, colonoscopies, and inspection of pipes [37,39,[53][54][55][56][57].…”

Non-smooth model and numerical analysis of a friction driven structure for piezoelectric motors

“…Further improvements can be made by considering the higher vibration mode of the tilt rod and the nonlinearity introduced by piezoelectric elements, such as hysteresis and saturation. Besides, the system can be extended by adding another tilt rod with opposite tilting direction to the previous one and incorporating the two groups of the beam branches described in previous contribution [25]. As a result, the extended system can be used to describe the behaviors of a number of other proposed piezoelectric actuators [27,28,29,30,31,32].…”