Design, modeling and experiment of a miniature biped piezoelectric robot

Abstract A novel miniature biped piezoelectric robot (MBPR) was designed with a patch-type beam structure. The robot utilizes an asymmetric friction-inertial driving principle to realize linear motion. The prominent feature is that it can move linearly under low frequency and low voltage, which is beneficial for untethered driving of the robot. In addition, the robot has the advantages of simple structure, convenience for multi-degree-of-freedom extension and strong load capacity. The effect of different dimensional parameters on the motion of the MBPR was studied and a prototype was fabricated, whose size was 39 × 15 × 4 mm 3 and weighed 0.9 g. The MBPR achieved a maximum speed of 0.4 body length per second. To expand the motion degree of freedom, an array of MBPR was fabricated and tested. The results indicated that the robot array realized linear motion of 1.3 mm s −1 and rotation motion of 1.6° s −1 . The array could carry a load of 25 g (13.8 times self-weight), which shows strong load capacity based on its lightweight structure. Finally, we designed a robot consisted of the array and an untethered power supply, 2-DOF untethered motion could be realized on the plane, which was conducive to finish large-scale movement and tasks in narrow environments.