Design of a Propagation Wave Type Microrobot for Moving on the Slippery Surface

Animal-like robots are serving an important role as a linkage between biology and engineering. So, in this paper, we aim to develop a biomimetic microrobot that mimics the locomotion mechanism of a gastropod. This microrobot has 3 DOF (x, y translation and rotation), and has small size, unlimited traveling range, high resolution and low cost. Its movement can be made using propagation wave that is generated by the controllable sinusoidal voltage source and piezoelectric effects. This soft motion that can be generated by propagation wave and piezoelectric mechanism would be useful for the motion on the slippery surface. So we modeled the propagation wave mechanism including piezoelectric effect and friction on the contact surface, and could know the velocity of the microrobot is dependent on the driving frequency, input voltage peak, propagation wavelength and surface friction coefficient. With these results we design the microrobot, and accomplish its fabrication and experimentation. The development of this microrobot shall be aimed to design an autonomous moving actuator like animal. Also it can be used from micromanipulation system technology to biology and medicine.