TY - GEN
T1 - Wirelessly-Controlled Untethered Piezoelectric Planar Soft Robot Capable of Bidirectional Crawling and Rotation
AU - Zheng, Zhiwu
AU - Cheng, Hsin
AU - Kumar, Prakhar
AU - Wagner, Sigurd
AU - Chen, Minjie
AU - Verma, Naveen
AU - Sturm, James C.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 IEEE.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Electrostatic actuators provide a promising approach to creating soft robotic sheets, due to their flexible form factor, modular integration, and fast response speed. However, their control requires kilo-Volt signals and understanding of complex dynamics resulting from force interactions by on-board and environmental effects. In this work, we demonstrate an untethered planar five-actuator piezoelectric robot powered by batteries and on-board high-voltage circuitry, and controlled through a wireless link. The scalable fabrication approach is based on bonding different functional layers on top of each other (steel foil substrate, actuators, flexible electronics). The robot exhibits a range of controllable motions, including bidirectional crawling (up to 0.6 cm/s), turning, and in-place rotation (at 1 degree/s). High-speed videos and control experiments show that the richness of the motion results from the interaction of an asymmetric mass distribution in the robot and the associated dependence of the dynamics on the driving frequency of the piezoelectrics. The robot's speed can reach 6 cm/s with specific payload distribution.
AB - Electrostatic actuators provide a promising approach to creating soft robotic sheets, due to their flexible form factor, modular integration, and fast response speed. However, their control requires kilo-Volt signals and understanding of complex dynamics resulting from force interactions by on-board and environmental effects. In this work, we demonstrate an untethered planar five-actuator piezoelectric robot powered by batteries and on-board high-voltage circuitry, and controlled through a wireless link. The scalable fabrication approach is based on bonding different functional layers on top of each other (steel foil substrate, actuators, flexible electronics). The robot exhibits a range of controllable motions, including bidirectional crawling (up to 0.6 cm/s), turning, and in-place rotation (at 1 degree/s). High-speed videos and control experiments show that the richness of the motion results from the interaction of an asymmetric mass distribution in the robot and the associated dependence of the dynamics on the driving frequency of the piezoelectrics. The robot's speed can reach 6 cm/s with specific payload distribution.
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U2 - 10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160886
DO - 10.1109/ICRA48891.2023.10160886
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85168675077
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
SP - 641
EP - 647
BT - Proceedings - ICRA 2023
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA 2023
Y2 - 29 May 2023 through 2 June 2023
ER -