Design, Fabrication, and Operation of Two-Dimensional Conveyance System With Ciliary Actuator Arrays

In this paper, we present the design, fabrication, and operation of a two-dimensional (2-D) microconveyance system. Conceptually, this system was designed as a mechanical part of an autonomous decentralized system composed of integrated micro actuator–sensor–controller cells. The presented system is a 2-D ciliary motion system (2-D CMS) composed of arrayed cantilever actuators. The actuators are made of two types of polyimide with different thermal expansion coefficients. They are thermally driven by flowing current in laminated heaters between the polyimide layers. We investigated the 2-D conveyance characteristics of the 2-D CMS consisting of $20 \times 20$ cells. Each cell has a pitch of 1420 $\mu$m consisting of four actuators of 500 $\mu$m in length. The conveyance was performed in a voltage range of 19–32 V, which corresponds to approximately 48–136 mW/cell, in a frequency range of 1–100 Hz, which corresponds to approximately 2–18 $\mu$m of minimum step size. We operated it in a feedback control scheme. In feedback operation mode, the 2-D CMS was controlled with a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera regulated by a PC and a programmable logic device (PLD). We succeeded to convey an object to a predetermined target point on the surface of the CMS.