A Lightweight High-Voltage Boost Circuit for Soft-Actuated Micro-Aerial-Robots

Flight is an energetically expensive task. While aerial insects can effortlessly fly through natural environments, achieving power autonomous flights in insect-scale robots re- mains a major challenge. In prior works, we developed soft- actuated insect-scale aerial robots that demonstrated unique capabilities such as in-flight collision recovery and somersaults. However, the soft dielectric elastomer actuators (DEAs) have low efficiency (<20%) and require a high driving voltage (>600 V). These properties represent formidable obstacles for soft aerial robots to achieve power autonomous flights. In this work, we developed a 127 mg boost circuit that can convert a 7.7 V DC input into a 600 V and 400 Hz output for driving a 120 mg DEA. It has an equivalent capacitance and resistance of 20 nF and 5 kΩ, respectively. The DEA is assembled into a 158 mg aerial robot, which can demonstrate liftoff while carrying the boost circuit as a payload. Although the robot remains tethered to an off-board power supply, this result represents a first step towards achieving power autonomy in soft aerial robots.