Development and Application of a Hybrid-drive Miniature-robot for Micromanipulation

A hybrid-drive miniature-robot for micromanipulation is proposed. The robot consists of a planar mobile module and a vertical micro-motion module. Based on the principle of inchworm peristalsis, the planar mobile module driven by stacked piezoelectric ceramics may move like a mobile robot on a magnetic plane through cooperation of two electromagnetic nuts, such as moving forward or backward, turning left or right, and rotating with zero radius on a surface. The vertical inching module is driven by a linear voice coil motor (LVCM). With an improved structure different from those of traditional VCMs, the proposed LVCM gets rid of the nonlinear problems such as high frequency vibration when driven in the gravity direction and low precision with traditional VCMs, and hence achieves frictionless vertical motion. The driving principles, performance and payload characteristics of the modules are analyzed, and an experimental application in automatic focusing for micromanipulation is carried out to verify the effectiveness and application feasibility of the presented hybrid-drive miniature-robot system.