Development of flapping robots using piezoelectric fiber composites — Improvement of flapping mechanism inspired from insects with indirect flight muscle

Abstract

Recently, many challenges are being made toward the realization of flight motions like insects, birds and so on. The purpose of this work is to develop flapping robots using a new type of piezoelectric material, that is, piezoelectric fiber composites. By using the composites, actuating as well as energyharvesting fibers and sensing fibers can be embedded in the structure and it makes flapping robots with compact and light structure. This paper proposes a new flapping mechanism for the flapping robots using piezoelectric fiber composites to improve the performance of the robot developed in our previous work, which is inspired from insects with indirect flight muscle. A prototype of flapping robot using the new flapping mechanism has been made and experimental results show the improvement of the performance.

Various Robots Made from Piezoelectric Materials and Electroactive Polymers: A Review

“…The maximum speed of the proposed robot reached 170 mm/s at 40 Hz by applying an input voltage of 400 Vpp. Ho et al also developed a quadruped mobile robot that employs two pieces of LIPCA actuators for bounding [17], (c) prototype in 2012 [18]. and 297 mm, respectively.…”

“…The maximum mean lift was 0.94 mN with a Rhagionidae type, 60 mm length wing, while the maximum thrust reached 1.09 mN with a Rhagionidae type, 30 mm length wing. In 2012, Ming et al improved the performance of their flapping robot by adopting a new flapping mechanism inspired from insects with indirect flight muscles [18]. The flapping robot prototype is presented in Figure 6(c).…”

Novel biocompatible transversal pneumatic artificial muscles made of PDMS/PET satin composite

“…These properties make PET fi bers interesting solution for reinforcement in composite materials. Examples of PET reinforcement applications are fl exure layer in hexapod crawling robot 16 and 0.2 mm frame of wings in fl apping robots 17 . PET fi bers are also used as reinforcement in pneumatic actuators such PneuFlex 18 .…”