A Low Mass Power Electronics Unit to Drive Piezoelectric Actuators for Flying Microrobots
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In this article, the authors presented a power electronics design for the actuators of an insect-scale flapping-wing robot, the RoboBee, which utilizes fully integrated drive stage circuits with a novel highside gate driver to save chip area.Abstract:
This paper presents a power electronics design for the piezoelectric actuators of an insect-scale flapping-wing robot, the RoboBee The proposed design outputs four high-voltage drive signals tailored for the two bimorph actuators of the RoboBee in an alternating drive configuration It utilizes fully integrated drive stage circuits with a novel highside gate driver to save chip area and meet the strict mass constraint of the RoboBee Compared with previous integrated designs, it also boosts efficiency in delivering energy to the actuators and recovering unused energy by applying three power saving techniques, dynamic common mode adjustment, envelope tracking, and charge sharing Using this design to energize four 15 nF capacitor loads with a 200 V and 100 Hz drive signal and tracking the control commands recorded from an actual flight experiment for the robot, we measure an average power consumption of 290 mWread more
Citations
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Liftoff of a 190 mg Laser-Powered Aerial Vehicle: The Lightest Wireless Robot to Fly
TL;DR: A significant milestone in the achievement of flight autonomy is presented: the first wireless liftoff of a 190 mg aerial vehicle that is remotely powered using a 976 nm laser and integrates a complete power electronics package weighing a total of 104 mg, using commercially available components and fabricated using a fast-turnaround laser based circuit fabrication technique.
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Insect-inspired, tailless, hover-capable flapping-wing robots: Recent progress, challenges, and future directions
Hoang Vu Phan,Hoon Cheol Park +1 more
TL;DR: The capability of free flight and flight endurance of the FWAVs, which are limited by current electronics and power technologies that severely constrain those vehicles using other driving actuators, rather than conventional electromagnetic motors, to freely take off, are discussed.
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Living IoT: A Flying Wireless Platform on Live Insects
TL;DR: In this paper, a biology-based solution integrating sensing, computing and communication functionalities onto live flying insects to create a mobile IoT platform is presented. But the platform is limited to distances of 80 m from the access points, all within a total weight budget of 102 mg.
Proceedings ArticleDOI
Living IoT: A Flying Wireless Platform on Live Insects
TL;DR: This work develops and deploys a mobile IoT platform on bumblebees which includes backscatter communication, low-power self-localization hardware, sensors, and a power source, and shows that the platform is capable of sensing, backscattering data at 1 kbps when the insects are back at the hive, and localizing itself up to distances of 80 m from the access points.
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Flow Control for Unmanned Air Vehicles
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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Controlled Flight of a Biologically Inspired, Insect-Scale Robot
TL;DR: An 80-milligram, insect-scale, flapping-wing robot modeled loosely on the morphology of flies is built and demonstrated tethered but unconstrained stable hovering and basic controlled flight maneuvers, which validates a sufficient suite of innovations for achieving artificial, insects-like flight.
Journal ArticleDOI
Analysis of integrated boost-flyback step-up converter
Tsorng-Juu Liang,K. C. Tseng +1 more
TL;DR: The integrated boost-flyback converter (IBFC) as discussed by the authors uses coupled-inductor techniques to achieve high step-up voltage with low duty ratio, and thus the slope compensation circuit is disregarded, and the voltage gain and efficiency at steady state are derived using the principles of inductor volt-second balance, capacitor charge balance and the small-ripple approximation for continuous-conduction mode.
Journal ArticleDOI
Driving high voltage piezoelectric actuators in microrobotic applications
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe electrical characteristics and drive requirements of low mass piezoelectric actuators, the design and optimization of suitable drive circuit topologies, aspects of the physical instantiation of these topologies including the fabrication of extremely lightweight magnetic components, and a custom, ultra low power integrated circuit that implements control functionality for the drive circuits.
Proceedings ArticleDOI
Envelope tracking power amplifier with pre-distortion linearization for WLAN 802.11g
TL;DR: A high-efficiency wide-bandwidth envelope amplifier and a GaAs MESFET class AB RFPA are designed and implemented for the WLAN 802.11g system to improve the linearity and overall system drain efficiency.
Proceedings ArticleDOI
Design, fabrication, and modeling of the split actuator microrobotic bee
TL;DR: It is shown that the split actuator microrobotic bee is able to independently modulate the motions of both wings and produce roll, pitch, and yaw torques, as well as a peak lift force of 1.3 mN, in a 70mg package.
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