A Piezoelectrically-Actuated Mesoscale Compliant Parallel Robot Via Additive Manufacture
Ariel Tabak, Annamalai Karuppiah, Ryan Orszulik
AI summary
Problem
Fabricating mesoscale robots for micro-positioning and pick-and-place applications is hindered by complex manual assembly, scaling limitations of traditional manufacturing, and the need for motion amplification from small piezoelectric displacements.
Approach
The team designed a compliant parallel robot using multimaterial jetting 3D printing, integrating a flexure-based transmission mechanism to convert and amplify the sub-millimeter linear motion of piezoelectric bimorphs into large rotational movement.
Key results
- Multimaterial transmission achieves ~29° peak rotation with narrow hysteresis
- Parallel robot workspace reaches 65.6 mm² (14.36 × 8.66 mm)
- Experimental trajectory tracking demonstrated at frequencies up to 10 Hz
- Finite element optimization reduces gravitational deflection to under 5% of horizontal workspace
Why it matters
Provides a low-barrier, rapid fabrication pathway for custom mesoscale robots capable of high-speed micro-manipulation and assembly.
Abstract
Micro-positioning and pick-and-place applications at the millimeter scale are driving the development of smaller robots necessitating the use of alternative methods for design and manufacture. Additive manufacturing can enable significant cost and time savings in the fabrication of robots while having a low barrier to entry. Specifically, multimaterial 3D printing naturally lends itself to the creation of monolithic mechanisms by removing the requirement for manual assembly, in particular, when com- pliant joints can replace the rigid joints that are traditionally used. The lack of an assembly requirement naturally opens up the possibility of reducing the size scale of these mechanisms. In this work, the design, fabrication, and characterization of an additively manufactured mesoscale compliant parallel robot actu- ated by piezoelectric bimorphs through a compliant transmission mechanism is presented. The transmission mechanism is required to convert and amplify the small but rapid linear displacements of piezoelectric actuators into the large rotational motion that is required to create a large workspace for the compliant parallel robot. The developed planar parallel robot has a workspace with maximum planar extents of 14.36 mm by 8.66 mm, with a total area of 65.6 mm2. Three different trajectories are tracked at frequencies of up to 10 Hz, demonstrating the robot’s capability to rapidly follow trajectories in its workspace.