IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO.

1, MARCH 2003

Piezoelectrically Actuated Four-Bar Mechanism with Two Flexible Links for Micromechanical Flying Insect Thorax
Metin Sitti, Member, IEEE
is utilized for actuation. The detailed design and characterization of the unimorph actuators are given in [6]. For stroke amplication, different compliant mechanisms are proposed such that Pokines [7] proposed a microamplier fabricated using LIGA process, Precht [8] developed a large stroke bender actuating a trailing edge ap, Kota et al. [9], [10] designed micro compliant mechanisms including a four-bar based mechanism, and Cox et al. constructed piezoelectric bimorph [2] and unimorph [11] based apping mechanisms with compliant exures. However, these works do not have a detailed kinematic, dynamic, and quasi-static blocking force analysis of the compliant mechanism for a specic task, and none of them could have a large stroke apping mechanism for a micromechanical ying device (Cox et al. achieved 3050 o apping stroke). In this paper, detailed analysis is realized for a micromechanical apping wing mechanism based on a compliant four-bar structure, and a high stroke apping mechanism is developed. Furthermore, many design constraints are considered such that the proposed design enables a compact and light weight thorax, high torques at the wing, and high resonant frequency.

Abstract In this paper, a piezoelectrically actuated four-bar mechanism with two exible links is proposed to be used in a micromechanical ying insect robot wing thorax for stroke amplication. PZT-5H and PZN-PT based unimorph actuators are utilized at the input link of the four-bar for a compact and light weight thorax transmission mechanism. The kinematics and dynamics of the proposed wing structure with two parallel fourbar mechanisms are analyzed, optimal four-bar link size selection method is introduced, and quasi-static forces generated at the wing are computed for evaluating the feasibility of the design. Using laser micro-machining and folding techniques, prototype four-bar structures are constructed. In the experiments, for a 10 1 0.12 mm3 PZT-5H actuator based four-bar mechanism, stroke amplication of around 20 25 is held, and an attached polyester wing is resonated at 29 Hz with around 90o apping motion. These results match closely with the predicted theoretical values. Index Terms Micro-mechatronics, micro-robots, compliant mechanisms, stroke amplication, biomimetic ying robots.

EING inspired from the biological systems in nature, human being could innovate many novel technologies and devices from the early times. As a recent example of this, biomimetic robotics has been enabling novel approaches to mechatronics problems. This kind of eld would enable multifunctional, smart, suboptimal, environment friendly, complex and adaptive machines and devices. Flying insect robots have been one of the important biomimetic research areas [1], [2], [3], [4]. Mechanical y robots with high ight maneuverability would enable novel distributed intelligent system applications. However, these y robots have many challenging design issues in the respects of size, weight, motion speed and amplitude, power consumption and density, biomimetic motion, on-board actuators, sensors, power sources, control and communication electronics, etc. In the sense of mechatronic design, light structures with high resonant frequencies, low power consuming and compact actuators, and high stroke and rotation motion mechanisms issues are the main challenges of this eld. This paper considers mainly the stroke amplication and compact thorax mechanism design issues using a four-bar mechanism with two exible links and an integrated piezoelectric unimorph actuator at the input link. As the piezoelectric material, soft PZT (P b(Zr, T i)O3) or single crystal PZNPT (P b(Zn1/3 N b2/3 )O3 P bT iO3) piezoelectric ceramics
M. Sitti is with the Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Robotics Institute. E-mail: msitti@andrew.cmu.edu

I. I NTRODUCTION

Fig. 1. Proposed 2 d.o.f. wing mechanism translating and rotating a folded polymer wing using two independently actuated parallel four-bar structures, and its kinematic and force parameters.

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

E B

P Z T u n im o r p h

y
f

, G

(x
1

,y

h
1

D
f

B
)

(x
2

,y
2

B
s te e l b e a m

, O

electric elds. Thus, the mechanism can be approximated by a four rigid link four-bar mechanism with four rotational (4R) pin joints. Therefore, the kinematics is approximated with the rigid 4R kinematics [13] while the dynamics is characterized by utilizing the lumped modeling of the exible beams as can be seen in Figure 3. For large motions of the unimorph exible link, nite element methods can be utilized for more accurate dynamic modeling [14], [15].
C
y b

G
x

B
h f

Fig. 2. Four-bar mechanism with two elastic beams at the input (OA) and output (BC) links, and a spar (DE) and wing attached perpendicularly to the center of the coupler link (AB).

II. F OUR -BAR T HORAX S TRUCTURE The complete view of an example apping and rotating 2 d.o.f. wing structure to be constructed is shown in Figure 1. Two four-bar mechanisms constitute the parallel thorax structures that could enable targeted biomimetic 90o 120o stroke and 90o wing rotation motions [12] with proper stroke amplication at resonant frequency of 100 150 Hz. This compact design assumes a exible wing, e.g. a fan-fold polymer wing. The structure of the proposed four-bar mechanism with a wing spar on it is shown in Figure 2. Two elastic beams at the input and output links deect with and angles so that the coupler link and spar rotate with angle . Here, the stroke amplication N of the four-bar structure is dened as: pp N= pp (1)

q
a

O
*
*

q
b

y
*
*

a g

h
*

P Z T u n im o r p h

Fig. 4. Multiple (two here) four-bar design proposal for enabling very high stroke amplication if necessary.

In this proposed four-bar thorax design, if the generated stroke is under the target 90o 120o range due to the limitations in the unimorph actuator motion range and output torques, then the multiple four-bar structure as illustrated in Figure 4 can be constructed. III. W ING
AND

T HORAX K INEMATICS

where pp = max min and pp = max min are the peak-to-peak input and output link motions.
Iw k
1

b
w

In order to mimic the insect ight kinematics, the forward and inverse kinematics of the robotic wing shown in Figure 1 are analyzed. Assuming that two four-bar mechanisms can be approximated as 4R rigid links, with pin joint mechanisms for simplicity, four-bar output angles 1 and 2 and wing spar rotations 1 and 2 can be computed from the input link rotations of 1 and 2 as (Appendix 1): i = tan1 = tan1
f f y2 y 1

B
J h L

b
a B 3

xf x f 2 1
f y2

b
1

m
*

m
*

i
@ b
3

k
3

xf c 2

(2)

There are kinematic singularities in the 4-bar such that c2 + a2 (h + b)2 2ac (3) Thus, the wing apping and rotation angles f and r as illustrated in Figure 1 can be computed as cos1 i cos1 c2 + a2 (h b)2 2ac

J
G

@
1

Fig. 3. Lumped parameter dynamic modeling of the four-bar mechanism with two exible beams, and a spar with attached wing with an aerodynamic external damping on it.

f r

= tan1 = tan1

Z Zo (X X o )2 + (Y Y o )2 z1 z 2 (x2 x1 )2 + (y2 y1 )2 .

1 + 2 2 (4)

For the simplicity of the analysis, the input and output deections are assumed to be linear, i.e. small, which is the case for piezoelectric unimorph actuators with moderate input

As the inverse kinematics, 1 and 2 input link motions are computed from the desired biomimetic f and r . At rst,

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

and (o)

given f and r , the aim is to compute 1 and 2 . From Eq. (4), it can be seen that f and r are coupled with i and i nonlinearly. Therefore, a closed form solution is complex, and following simplications can be made: (1) Assume that o o o o (xo , y1 , z1 ) and (xo , y2 , z2 ) are not a function of i , i.e. the 1 2 base of the spars are moving insignicantly, (2) (y2 y1 )2 term is negligible in the r equation. Then, tanr z1 z 2 x2 x 1 (5)

60 40 20 0

20 40 60 0 1 2 3 4 1 2

Assuming 1 = 2 = , i stroke angles, i and i i = 1, 2 are computed in Appendix 2. For testing the approximation error for the inverse kinematics equations, an insect biomimetic wing trajectory for 45o wing apping and 90o rotation at the resonant frequency of 100 Hz is used as the desired f and r as shown in Figure 5c [12]. The resulting inverse kinematics solutions in the reference four-bar actuator motions of 1 and 2 , and spar stroke motions of 1 and 2 are shown in Figure 5a and 5b. Parameters of the thorax are a = b = 10 mm, c = 9 mm, h = 0.5 mm, Lt = 1 mm, La = 7 mm, and = 30o . For showing the accuracy of the approximate inverse kinematics model, f and r at the wing are computed from i and i values using the forward kinematic equations. As given in Figure 5c, it can be seen that the simplication in Eq. (5) results in a small error, and therefore it can be used for generating the actuator reference motion. Moreover, the wing cord length Lw change during this biomimetic motion is displayed in Figure 6. Here, it can be seen that around 20% strain is induced on the compliant wing which would result in elastic restoring forces on the wing cord depending on the folded wing stiffness kw . A. Link Size Optimization Using the kinematic equations, optimal four-bar link sizes and initial angles are derived for optimal stroke amplication N . Fixing h and the piezoelectric actuator input voltage V , the effect of a = b = l and base link c, i.e. initial input link angle 0 , on N is investigated. Here, c = h + 2Lcos0 due to the symmetry. For a free deecting unimorph actuator, DC (low frequency) tip displacement dc , blocking force Fb , and mechanical stiffness k1 can be written as [6]: dc Fb k1 = = = 3l2 AB(B + 1) d31 V h2 D p 3whp AB(B + 1) d31 V 4sp l AB + 1 wh3 Fb D p = dc 4sp l3 AB + 1

time (ms)

10

(a)
67 66 65

1 and 2 (o)

64 63 62 61 0 1 2 3 4

1
2

time (ms)

10

(b)
50 40 30 20

and ( )

10 0 10 20 30 40 50 0 1

r
f

Approximated Reference 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

time (ms)

(c)
Fig. 5. Inverse kinematics simulation for the wing for tracking a biomimetic kinematic motion of 45o stroke and 45o rotation at the resonance of 100 Hz: (a) computed stroke motions of 1 and 2 ; (b) computed four-bar input link motions of 1 and 2 ; (c) biomimetic reference (dotted lines), and approximated (solid lines) wing apping and rotation motions.

(6) the PZT-5H, PZN-PT, and steel layers, Youngs modulus E, density , d31 , coupling factor k31 , relative dielectric constant T K3 = / 0 , and maximum electric eld E3 values are given in Table 1.

where A = sp /ss = Es /Ep , B = hs /hp , C = s /p , D = A2 B 4 + 2A(2B + 3B 2 + 2B 3 ) + 1. Here, l is the unimorph length, w is the width, V is the applied voltage, d31 is the transverse piezoelectric coefcient, and sp and ss are the elastic compliances, hp and hs are the thicknesses, Ep and Es are the Youngs moduli, and p and s are the densities of the piezoelectric and steel layers respectively. For

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

10 9.5

10 O 9 8

PZT actuator wing spar A B

Wing Cord Length (mm)

9 8.5 8 7.5 7 6.5 0 1 2 3 4

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 C 0 0 2 4 6 8

10

12

14

16

18

time (ms)

10

Fig. 8. Simulated spar motion for a four-bar structure with a = b = l = 10 mm, c = 9 mm, h = 0.5 mm, and V = 120V which gives N = 22.

Fig. 6. Change of the 2 d.o.f. wing cord length during the biomimetic apping and rotation in Figure 5.

E (GP a) (kg/m3 ) d31 (C/N ) k31 T K3 E3 (V /m)

Table 1. PZT-5H, PZN-PT, and steel layer properties [1].

PZT-5H 61 7500 320 1012 0.44 3800 1.5 106

PZN-PT 15 8000 950 1012 0.5 5000 10 106

steel 193 7872

in the plot correspond to kinematically singular link sizes. N gets the maximum value at the edge of the singular region, and link sizes should be selected close to these regions provided that too close selection would result in kinematic instabilities since the input link motion at resonance could be magnied depending on the mechanism Q. Thus, g and l will be chosen for N 20, e.g. c = 9 mm and l = 10 mm would give N = 22 as displayed in Figure 8 with = 0 2o . IV. F LAPPING T HORAX DYNAMICS Assuming the elastic beams are linearly bent with small 1 and 3 displacements, they are represented as point effective masses of m = 0.24m1 and m = 0.24m3 with spring 1 3 constants of k1 and k3 , and damping coefcients of b1 and b3 as shown in Figure 3. A spar is attached to the coupler with mass ms and length La . bw in the gure represents the aerodynamic damping on the wing, and Iw is the wing inertia. In the case of just a spar with no wing, bw = 0 and Iw = 0. The kinetic energy K, potential energy U , and dissipation energy D are computed for the equation of motion derivation as [17] K = 1 2 1 2 1 2 m + m + I2 + 2 1 1 2 3 3 2 2aw2 r2 cos( + 2 )]2 = 1 2 m2 [a2 + r2 w2 + 2 1 A()2 2

For the design considerations, above equations are converted to the rotational motion of the actuator. Assuming the actuator tip deection is small, actuator rotation angle dc and output torque are given as follows: dc dc 3l AB(B + 1) = 2 d31 V l hp D 3whp AB(B + 1) d31 V = Fb l = 4sp AB + 1 =

(7)

1 1 2 2 k1 1 + k3 3 + mt gacos + m ghcos + 3 2 2 m2 gr2 cos(2 + ) 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 = b 1 1 + b 3 3 + b w = F0 2 . 2 2 2 2

(8)

Using the Lagrange equation of

Fig. 7. Stroke amplication (N = 33 at the darkest region) as a function of the four-bar link sizes of a = b = l and c for h = 0.5 mm and a PZT-5H based unimorph actuator with hp = 70 m, hs = 50 m, V = 120 V , and w = 1 mm. White colored region at the right-hand-side of the plot corresponds to the kinematically singular link sizes.

d K dt

K U D + + =

(9)

the following equation of motion is derived (Appendix 3): A + 1 dA 2 + D 0 + D 1 w3 + D 2 w2 + F 0 = . 2 d (10)

For a PZT-5H piezoelectric layer, for hp = 70 m, hs = 50 m, h = 0.5 mm, and V = 120 V , N values can be seen in Figure 7 for different l and c values. White regions

As approximate lumped estimates of the resonant frequency = 2fr and mechanical quality factor of the thorax Q,

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

following equalities can be derived: 2

2 k 1 a 2 + w 3 k 3 b2 2 2 m a 2 + w 2 I 2 + w 3 m b 2 1 3 2 2 2 k1 a + w 3 k3 b . 2 2 (b1 + w2 bw + w3 b3 )

(11)

c a b le s (a ) s p a r

to p lin k

V. DC F ORCE A NALYSIS In the thorax design, one important parameter is the generated torques (or lift forces) at the wing spars. If these torques are signicantly less than the generated up or down lift forces by the aerodynamic forces, the designs will not give enough performance. Therefore, the computation of these forces for the proposed design is realized for performance evaluation. Assuming the 4-bar input link is rotated by a small by applying an input voltage V through the input link unimorph actuator, and the motion is quasi-static (DC motion), resulting spar motion and blocking torque have the following relation using the principle of virtual work: Wv = + = U = k1 a2 + k3 b2 . (12) Here, the gravitational terms are neglected. For a constant t, = w2 and = w3 . Thus, + w2 = k1 a2 + k3 b2 w3 . This gives the blocking torque at the spar end as: 1 ( + k1 a2 + k3 b2 w3 ) . = w2 where k3 = wh3 s , 4b3 ss (14) (13) VII. S IMULATIONS
AND

P Z T /P Z N -P T s te e l p o ly e s te r

(b )

Fig. 9. Assembly process of the input link unimorph actuator and output link steel beam with polyester exible joints: (a) horizontal assembly of input, output, and top links and steel spar, (b) assembly with the hollow rectangular steel base.

E XPERIMENTS

(15)

assuming the exible output link is taken as a steel beam with thickness hs , length l, and width w. The lift and thrust forces on the ith (i = 1, 2) wing spar tip end, generated by the above torque, can be computed as i i F = /La . Then the generated average vertical lift force at the wing rotation axis edge is:
lif Fz t 1 2 = (F cos1 cos1 + F cos2 cos2 )/2 (16)

VI. T HORAX FABRICATION Assembly process of the four-bar with spar is shown in Figure 9. Piezoelectric unimorph actuators are custom-made, and their fabrication details are given in [6]. Super glue is used for attaching a steel base to the unimorph for xing it to the base frame, conductive epoxy is used for the cable connection to the unimorph actuator, and the unimorph ground cable is soldered to the steel beam. The top link joint is designed by a polyester exible sheet of 12.5 m thickness, and is cut by a laser micro-machining device (Quicklaze-50, New Wave Research Inc.). Fabrication results for PZT-5H (Piezo Systems Inc.) and PZN-PT (TRS Ceramics Inc.) based unimorph actuators are displayed in Figure 10. In Figure 10b, a polyester wing with 100 m thickness is also attached for apping experiments.

At rst, output torques and lift and drag forces generated by the 2 d.o.f. wing mechanism are simulated. Assuming two identical four-bar structures with PZN-PT based unimorph actuators in the input link, the simulation parameters are: a = l = 5 mm, w = 1 mm, b = 3 mm, c = 4.5 mm, h = 0.5 mm, La = 7 mm, 1 = 2 = 30o , Lt = 1 mm, and hp = hs = 50 m. Thus, k1 = 95 N/m, k3 = 48 N/m, m1 = 2.0 mg and m3 = 1.9 mg. For these values, input 1 2 link DC motions are 1 = 0 6o and 2 = 0 5.8o with 1 o 2 o 0 = 36.5 and 0 = 36.9 as shown in Figure 11. Then DC kinematic spar motions are also given in the gure. For different electric elds of E1,2 [5, 5] V /m, the range of actuator and spar torques and average lift forces are given in Figures 12 and 13 respectively. Since the aerodynamic lift force would be equal or twice the weight of the overall ying robot which is designed for overall weight of 1 mN [1], the aerodynamic loading would be in the range of 0.7 1.4 105 N m where the resultant torques in Figure 12 with the range of [5, 4] 105 N m can handle this range of forces. These results can be generalized to the resonating 2 d.o.f. case if Q 1 is achieved. Thus, the proposed wing mechanism could stand aerodynamic loadings at resonance. As experimental results, a prototype four-bar structure in Figure 10b without a wing and a PZT-5H based unimorph actuator was constructed rstly. Motion of the spar corresponding to = 0 2o unimorph actuator motion is shown in Figure 14. Here, the spar has a stroke of around 90o 100o at resonance of 32 Hz with a = b = 10 mm, h = 0.5 mm, and V = 120 V . The up and down strokes are observed with a side-view optical microscope. This means

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

70 50 30 10 1 vs. 1 vs.
2 2

(a)

1 and 2 (degree)

10 30 50 70 30

32

34

1 and 2 (degree)

36

38

40

42

Fig. 11. Simulated spar motion due for biomimetic wing motion: rst spar (o), and second spar (+) where the slope of the curves represent w 2 which becomes very large close to the singular stroke ends.

the experiments. VIII. D ISCUSSIONS

(b)
Fig. 10. Fabrication results of unimorph and steel beam input and output links with polyester exible joints assembly: (a) 5 1 0.25 mm3 PZN-PT unimorph based four-bar and spar, (b) 10 1 0.12 mm3 PZT-5H unimorph based four-bar with a rigid polyester wing.

N = 20 25 is achieved which is coinciding well with the size optimization plot in Figure 7. On the other hand, from the linear approximate model of Eq. (11), fr = 64 Hz is estimated using the values of k1 = 43 N/m, k3 = 6 N/m, m1 = 9 mg, m3 = 4 mg, I2 = 4.4 1011 kgm2 , Iw = bw = 0, a = b = 10 mm, h = 0.5 mm, c = 9 mm, La = 7 mm, Js = 4.4 1011 kgm2 , 0 = 64.8o, V = 120 V , 0 = 1.5104 N m, hp = 70 m, hs = 50 m, w = 1 mm, around 2 mg glue 2 mass in the actuator, and b1 + w3 b2 1.2 105 N sm. However, using the dynamic model in Eq.(9), fr = 36 Hz and N = 20.5 are predicted from the frequency response plots of spar motion and stroke amplication N as shown in Figure 15. These expected values match closely to the measured data. Moreover, at the resonant frequency of 36 Hz, input link motion and spar link motion are displayed in Figure 16 to show the link behavior. Then, the polyester wing is attached on the same spar, and the motion of the four-bar is tested as shown in Figure 18. The stroke motion becomes around 90o with resonance at 29 Hz. From the dynamics solutions, fr = 33 Hz and N = 19.2 are estimated from the frequency response plots in Figure 17 where the same values with the no wing calculations are used except Iw = 2 1011 kgm2 and bw = 8.65 109 N sm [6]. Due to the added wing load and aerodynamic damping, the resonant frequency and Q are changed. The slight differences between the theoretical and experimental results in the resonant frequency and stroke motion in both cases could be due to the neglected polyester exure compliance, alignment errors, and larger c link size in

1 d.o.f. apping structure design is shown with theoretical and experimental results successfully. For 2 d.o.f. apping and rotation actuation, possible designs would be passive or active 2 d.o.f. wing thorax mechanisms. The passive one would have an offset point mass or an offset exible joint between the spar and the rigid wing for the introduced 1 d.o.f. structure so that wing inertial and aerodynamic forces would passively rotate the wing. For this case, proposed models could directly apply. This design would be very simple, compact, light, power saving, and easy to control. It could be used for simple ight systems, but it can not easily control the wing rotation timing [12] type of signicant ight control parameters. For active control, two actively controlled parallel and identical four-bar structures as proposed in this paper would be one possible solution. A rigid wing [18] or a folded wing as in Figure 1 can be attached to the spars of two four-bars or to a differential in between. Folded wing analysis is explained in detail, and the differential based rigid wing case is very similar in kinematics, dynamics, and control. The main issue in both designs is their dynamic behavior at resonance. Two fourbar structures are coupled elastically and inertially through the wing or differential, and there are two resonant modes, apping 1 and rotation 2 , where:
2 1 2 2

K1 + 22 N 2 kw 22 N 2 Ir 2K1 N 2 If

(17)

2 where K1 = k1 a2 +w3 k3 b2 here, kw is the wing or differential coupling stiffness, If and Ir are the wing apping and rotational inertias respectively, and is the rotational gain factor. Thus, for matching both motion modes, i.e. 1 2 :

Ir

1 N 2 kw + If 42 2K1

(18)

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

5

7
3

5 4 3 2

x 10

x 10 5

DOWN STROKE

(Nm)

(N) F
lift

1 2 3 4 5 70 50 30 10 10 30 50 70

3 UP STROKE

(degree)
1

5 50

30

10

(a)
5 4 3 2 x 10
5

(degree)
f

10

30

50

Fig. 13. Spar end average lifting force at the wing cord center for electric elds of E1,2 [5, 5] V /m.

(Nm)

1 0

1 2 3 4 5 70 50 30 10 10 30 50 70

2 (degree)

(b)
1 2 Fig. 12. For electric elds of E1,2 [5, 5] V /m: (a) and (b) blocking torques at the spar ends.

Fig. 14. PZT-5H unimorph actuated spar motion with around 90 o stroke at resonance (33 Hz) with around 2o unimorph input motion: down stroke (left) and up stroke (right) images.

condition should be held. In the extreme case of kw 0, still If 42 Ir is required. In the above dynamic models, aerodynamic force modeling is a critical component. In this paper, for just translational apping case, bw is approximated as a linear damper representing the aerodynamic translational lift forces. However, in the case of a 2 d.o.f. wing thorax, rotational lift forces, angle of attack, rotation timing, wake capture [12] type of other aerodynamic parameters and force models should be included in the dynamic equations. These models are complex, and even approximate analytic solutions are very challenging for unsteady insect ight aerodynamics. Piezoelectric actuators are very promising for the ying robot wing thorax driving from the initial results. They are assumed to be linear since their motion is very small. However, for larger stroke amplication, input voltages could become very high which would result in nonlinearities such as actuator softening [6] and saturation. These nonlinearities would be included in the models for an exact solution at high voltages. Moreover, bipolar actuation could result in depolarization and high internal actuator damping. Therefore, unipolar actuation would be desirable [6] although actuator motion would be lost

by half then. Also, the actuator life-time is a critical issue since the piezoelectric ceramics are very brittle and wing moves at high frequencies with peak forces and dynamic nonlinearities. For this, Q of the overall system should be kept close to 12 as in the case of the real insect [1], and external wing torsional loading on the actuator should be minimized. The apping structure in Figure 18 could survive for millions of cycles, and the target life-time of the mechanical y is around 30 minutes at 150 Hz apping frequency. For enabling a smart thorax structure, piezoelectric actuators could be also utilized as integrated sensors. This compact design would enable on-line sensing of the actuator force and position which would be utilized in the active wing trajectory control. Otherwise, it would be challenging to integrate external sensors on the wing during the fabrication process. As the nal issue, a compact and light weight power source is required for an autonomous ight. This is always the critical issue of all autonomous micro-robots, and thin-lm batteries, solar cells, and external powering via microwaves and magnetic elds are some possible solutions. For the ying robot, microfabricated silicon based solar cells will be integrated to the robot body. Required power is around 10 50 mW range depending on the efciency of the actuators and driving electronics [19], with up to 200 V piezoelectric actuator driving voltage. Autonomous micromechanical ying robots would

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

85 80 75 70 65
67 66.5 66 65.5

(o)

60 55 50 45 40 35 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 68 72

( )

65 64.5 64 63.5 63 62.5 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2

Frequency (Hz)

time (s)
40 30 20 10

20.4 20 19.6

Stroke Amplification

(o)

0 10 20

19.2 18.8 18.4 18 4

30 40 50 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.2

14 19 24 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 64 69

Frequency (Hz)

time (s)

Fig. 15. Frequency response plots of the spar motion (upper) and stroke amplication N (lower) for no wing case, and the values of = 0 2o , a = b = 10 mm, h = 0.5 mm, and c = 9 mm.

Fig. 16. The simulated result of the input link motion (upper) and spar link motion (lower) at resonance of fr = 36 Hz for no wing case with an actuator input torque amplitude of 0 = 1.5 104 N m.

become real after integrating the compact power source to the robot, optimizing the 2 d.o.f. wing actuation mechanism and materials for 150 Hz resonant frequency high stroke motion and a light weight thorax mechanism, developing biologically inspired ight control algorithms for robot trajectory control, and integrating wireless communication, power electronics, computation, and sensors to the robot body. This implies that this kind of area is still in its early infancy. IX. C ONCLUSIONS In this paper, a four-bar mechanism with two exible links is proposed to be used in a micromechanical ying insect thorax design for stroke amplication. PZT-5H and PZN-PT based unimorph actuators are utilized at the input link of the fourbar for a compact design. The kinematics, dynamics, link size optimization with kinematically singular case considerations, and quasi-static force analysis of the proposed wing structure is realized. Using laser micro-machining and folding techniques, prototype four-bars are constructed, and it is shown that the single four-bar structure can have around 90o stroke motion at 29 Hz with a rigid polyester wing on it. Thus, the proposed design is promising with introduced theoretical models and experimental results. 2 d.o.f. apping and rotating wing mechanism would enable biomimetic ight lift forces where the actuators could supply the desired input forces. In this case, active and passive wing mechanism concepts are introduced, and dynamic behavior issues of the coupled

active structures is addressed. Precise tuning of wing inertias, wing and link stiffness and damping values, output forces and motions, stroke amplication, quality factor, link sizes, alignment of the exures and the wing, bonding of hybrid materials, etc. is very challenging for a successful thorax design. Precision assembly robotic systems [20] would be required for mass produced manufacturing of these micro scale robots in the future. By manufacturing these micromechanical ying insect robots in large numbers, search and rescue in impenetrable areas, inspection in hazardous environments, distributed intelligent systems, new toys, etc. applications would become possible. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was funded by ONR MURI N00014-98-1-0671 and DARPA. The author would like to thank Ronald S. Fearing for his comments and discussions, Tao Su for fabricating the piezoelectric actuators, and Joseph Yan for helping in assembly and folding process. A PPENDIX 1: F ORWARD K INEMATICS
xf 1
f y1

= = =

acosi asini c CD (CD c)2 (1 + C 2 )(c2 b2 + D2 ) 1 + C2

xf 2

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

75 70 65 60
o o (xo , y2 , z2 ) 2

o o (xo , y1 , z1 ) 1

= =

h h sin1 + asin1 , c cos1 acos1 ) 2 2 h h (Lt , sin2 + asin2 , c cos2 acos2 ) 2 2 (0,

(o)

55 50 45 40 35 30 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 68 72

where a, b, c and h are the four-bar link lengths for both four-bars as illustrated in Figure 2, and i = 1, 2 shows the index number for the four-bars, La is the spar length, Lw is the wing cord length, Lt is the separation distance of two four-bars, and 1 and 2 are the pan angles of the spars.

A PPENDIX 2: I NVERSE K INEMATICS

Frequency (Hz)

19.2 19

1 2 p A B C D i i
8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44 48 52 56 60 64 68 72

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

cos

BD C B 2 + C 2 + D2 C 2 + D2

Stroke Amplification

18.8 18.6 18.4 18.2 18 17.8 17.6 4

p 1 2f sintanr tanr Lt /La cosp Asinp + 1 A(1 + cosp) + sinp tan1 tan1
f y1

xf 1
f y2

xf 2

Frequency (Hz)

Fig. 17. Frequency response plots of the spar motion (left plot) and stroke amplication N (right plot) when a polyester wing is attached to the spar with the inertia of Iw 2 1011 kgm2 and the damping of bw 8.65 109 N sm.

xf 1
f y1

EF Exf + F 1

E 2 F 2 (F 2 a2 )(1 + E 2 ) 1 + E2

xf 2
f y2

xf + hcosi 1
f y1 + hsini hcosi + c hsini b2 + 2chcosi h2 c2 a2 . 2hsini

E F

(19)

For xf , becomes + for i 0, and else. 1

A PPENDIX 3: DYNAMICS PARAMETERS

1 3 w2 w3 mt m2 I2 x 2 = = = = = = = = = = = a b 0 0 w2 w3 d asin( + ) = d hsin( ) asin( ) d = d bsin( + ) m + m2 + m 1 3 m + ms + mw ms + mw ms L 2 a Iw + 3 (ms + mw )La /2 La m + (ms + mw ) 2 1 2x tan h

Fig. 18. Polyester wing motion with around 90o stroke and 29 Hz resonant frequency: down stroke (left) and up stroke (right) images.
f y2

= = = = = = =

C D (X, Y, Z) (X o , Y o , Z o ) (x1 , y1 , z1 ) (x2 , y2 , z2 )

Cxf + D 2 c acosi asini b2 c 2 + a 2 h 2 2asini x 1 + x 2 y1 + y 2 z 1 + z 2 ( , , ) 2 2 2 o o o o o o x + x 2 y1 + y 2 z 1 + z 2 ( 1 , , ) 2 2 2 o o (x1 La cos1 sin1 , y1 + La cos1 cos1 , o z1 + La sin1 ) o (xo + La cos2 sin2 , y2 + La cos2 cos2 , 2 o z2 + La sin2 )

IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 8, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

10

r2 A() dA d

= = =

h , 2cos2 2 2 C0 + C1 w2 + C2 w3 + C3 w2 cos( + 2 ) dw2 dw3 dw2 2C1 w2 + 2C2 w3 + C3 cos( + 2 ) d d d w2 (w2 1)sin( + 2 ) m a2 + m 2 a2 1 I2 m b2 3 2ar2 m2 a(C4 + C5 ) hsin2 ( ) a(C6 + C7 ) bsin2 ( ) (w3 1)sin( )cos( ) sin( )cos( )(w3 w2 ) (w2 1)sin( )cos( ) sin( )cos( )(w3 w2 ) 2 2 b 1 a 2 + b 3 b 2 w3 + b w w2 , 2 k1 a mt gasin , k3 b2 , m ghsin m2 gr2 cos(2 + ) 3

C0 C1 C2 C3 dw2 d dw3 d C4 C5 C6 C7 F0 D0 D1 D2

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

[13] J. M. McCarthy, Geometric Design of Linkages, Springer Verlag, New York, 2000. [14] Y. Wang and Z.Wang, A temporal nite element method for the dynamic analysis of exible mechanisms, Journal of Sound and Vibration, vol. 213, no. 3, pp. 569576, 1998. [15] M. Karkoub and A. Yigit, Vibration control of a four-bar mechanism with a exible coupler link, Journal of Sound and Vibration, vol. 222, pp. 171189, 29 April 1999. [16] J. Smits and W. Choi, The constituent equations of piezoelectric heterogenous bimorphs, IEEE Tran. on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Freq. Control, vol. 38, pp. 256270, May 1991. [17] W. Zhang, Q. Li, and L. Guo, Integrated design of mechanical structure and control algorithm for a programmable four-bar linkage, IEEE/ASME Trans. on Mechatronics, vol. 4, pp. 354362, Dec 1999. [18] S. Avadhanula, R. J. Wood, D. Campolo, and R. S. Fearing, Dynamically tuned design of the MFI thorax, Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 5259, Washington DC, May 11-15, 2002. [19] D. Campolo, M. Sitti, and R.S. Fearing, Efcient Charge Recovery Method for Driving Piezoelectric Actuators in Low Power Applications, IEEE Trans. on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, vol. 50, no. 1, Jan. 2003 (to appear). [20] R. Sahai, J. Lee, and R.S. Fearing, Towards Automatic Assembly of Sub-Centimeter Millirobot Structures, Third Int. Workshop on Microfactories, Minneapolis, Sept. 2002.

where 0 and 0 are the initial link angles, mw is the wing mass, m is the top link mass, and ms is the spar mass.

R EFERENCES
[1] R. Fearing, K. Chiang, M. Dickinson, D. Pick, M. Sitti, and J. Yan, Transmission mechanism for a micromechanical ying insect, Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 15091516, San Francisco, CA, USA, Apr. 2000. [2] A. Cox, E. Garcia, and M. Goldfarb, Actuator development for a apping microrobotic microaerial vehicle, SPIE Microrobotics Symposium, Nov. 1998, Boston, USA. [3] I. Shimoyama, H. Miura, K. Suzuki, and Y. Ezura, Insect-like microrobots with external skeletons, IEEE Control Systems Magazine, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 3741, 1993. [4] J. Yan, M. Dickinson, J. Birch, M. Sitti, T. Su, and R.S. Fearing, Wing transmission for a Micromechanical Flying Insect, Journal of Micromechatronics, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 221-237, 2002. [5] M. Sitti, PZT actuated four-bar mechanism with two exible links for Micromechanical Flying Insect thorax, Proc. of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Conf., pp. 3893-3900, Korea, May 2001. [6] M. Sitti, D. Campolo, J. Yan, R. Fearing, T. Su, D. Taylor, and T. Sands, Development of PZT and PZN-PT based unimorph actuators for micromechanical apping mechanisms, in Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, pp. 3839-3846, Korea, May 2001. [7] B. Pokines and E. Garcia, A smart material microamplication mechanism fabricated using LIGA, Smart Mater. Struct., vol. 7, pp. 105112, 1998. [8] E. Precht and S. Hall, Design of a high efciency, large stroke, electromechanical actuator, Smart Mater. Struct., vol. 8, pp. 1330, 1999. [9] S. Kota, J. Hetrick, Z. Li, and L. Saggere, Tailoring unconventional actuators using compliant transmissions: Design methods and applications, IEEE/ASME Trans. on Mechatronics, vol. 4, pp. 396408, Dec. 1999. [10] S. Kota, J. Hetrick, Z. Li, S. Rodgers, and T. Krygowski, Synthesizing high-performance compliant stroke amplication systems for MEMS, Proc. of MEMS, pp. 164169, 2000. [11] A. Cox, D. Monopoli, and M. Goldfarb, Development of piezoelectrically actuated elastodynamic apping microaerial devices, ASME Adaptive Structures and Material Systems, pp. 257262, 1999. [12] M. Dickinson, F.-O. Lehnman, and S. Sane, Wing rotation and the aerodynamic basis of insect ight, Science, vol. 284, pp. 20852104, 18 June 1999.

Metin Sitti (M00) received the BSc and MSc degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1992 and 1994 respectively, and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, in 1999. He worked in the CAD/CAM Robotics Department in the TUBITAK Marmara Research Center, Kocaeli, Turkey, as a research engineer during 1994-1996, working on visual servoing, computer vision, and robot control projects. He was a recipient of the Monbusho Research Fellowship during his study in Japan. He was a research scientist and lecturer at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley during 1999-2002 working on micromechanical ying insect robots and biomimetic gecko foot-hair micro/nanostructure analysis and fabrication. He is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include micro/nano-robotics, nanomanufacturing, biomimetic micro/nano systems, bio-nanotechnology, Scanning Probe Microscopy, haptic interfaces, and tele-robotics. He received the best paper award in the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in 1998, and the best video award in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Conference in 2002. He is a member of IEEE, ASME, and Robotics Society of Japan.