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Abstract This work introduces a mixed‐transducer micro‐origami to achieve efficient vibration, controllable motion, and decoupled sensing. Existing micro‐origami systems tend to have only one type of transducer (actuator/sensor), which limits their versatility and functionality because any given transducer system has a narrow range of advantageous working conditions. However, it is possible to harness the benefit of different micro‐transducer systems to enhance the performance of functional micro‐origami. More specifically, this work introduces a micro‐origami system that can integrate the advantages of three transducer systems: strained morph (SM) systems, polymer based electro‐thermal (ET) systems, and thin‐film lead zirconate titanate (PZT) systems. A versatile photolithography fabrication process is introduced to build this mixed‐transducer micro‐origami system, and their performance is investigated through experiments and simulation models. This work shows that mixed‐transducer micro‐origami can achieve power efficient vibration with high frequency, large vibration ranges, and little degradation; can produce decoupled folding motion with good controllability; and can accomplish simultaneous sensing and actuation to detect and interact with external environments and small‐scale samples. The superior performance of mixed‐transducer micro‐origami systems makes them promising tools for micro‐manipulation, micro‐assembly, biomedical probes, self‐sensing metamaterials, and more.
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Mobile Manipulation-based Deployment of Micro Aerial Robot Scouts through Constricted Aperture-like Ingress Points
This paper presents a novel strategy for the autonomous deployment of Micro Aerial Vehicle scouts through constricted aperture-like ingress points, by narrowly fitting and launching them with a high-precision Mobile Manipulation robot. A significant problem during exploration and reconnaissance into highly unstructured environments, such as indoor collapsed ones, is the encountering of impassable areas due to their constricted and rigid nature. We propose that a heterogeneous robotic system-of-systems armed with manipulation capabilities while also ferrying a fleet of micro-sized aerial agents, can deploy the latter through constricted apertures that marginally fit them in size, thus allowing them to act as scouts and resume the reconnaissance mission. This work's contribution is twofold: first, it proposes active-vision based aperture detection to locate candidate ingress points and a hierarchical search-based aperture profile analysis to position a MAV's body through them, and secondly it presents and experimentally demonstrates the novelty of a system-of-systems approach which leverages mobile manipulation to deploy other robots which are otherwise incapable of entering through extremely narrow openings.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2008904
- PAR ID:
- 10296722
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2021 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- The DOI is not currently available.
