圧電素子を用いた多自由度マイクロロボットの構造と動作

Abstract

We describe the structure and preliminary experimental results of two microrobots. The structure of the robot is a Stewart platform using piezo elements. The robots move on a surface in a wide operation area by the principle of an inchworm. Their platforms realize minute displacement with six degrees of freedom by the parallel mechanism. The static displacement of the platforms is expressed by using the Jacobian matrix. The minute displacements obtained by the preliminary experiments were described. In the first model, the displacement was much smaller than the theoretical value, because of the stiffness of the structure. In the second model, we introduced elastic hinge mechanism which enlarges the deformation of the piezo and decreases the stiffness of the structure. The minute displacement which was obtained experimentally almost agreed with the theoretical displacement. The minimum displacement in the linear direction was 1 μm, and the maximum linear displacement was about 10 μm.