Analysis, design and control of a planar micro-robot driven by two centripetal-force actuators

This paper presents the motion analysis, design and position control of a novel, low cost, sliding micro-robot, which is actuated by centripetal forces generated by robot mounted vibration micro-motors. A new, two-micromotor design of the platform is presented, that improves system energy efficiency, and further does not necessitate for synchronous actuator operation and robot symmetry. The motion behavior of the micro-robot, for asynchronous actuation operation, is expressed analytically and simulation results are presented. A control strategy for microrobot x,thetas
_z
, position control that employs two motor speed controllers, and a platform position controller is designed. The control system performance is evaluated through the simulation of a successful trajectory tracking task. A prototype of the micro-robot has been constructed and is presented