Development of an Actuator for a Robotic Manipulator with Ultrasonic Motor

—2nd Development of Prototypal Spherical Ultrasonic Motor—

Abstract

The creation of advanced dexterous mechanical manipulators and actuators is increasingly important for development of intelligent robots, which are capable of performing any human arm task. This paper deals with a spherical ultrasonic motor which is an application of an ultrasonic motor to such a dexterous actuator which has multi-degree of freedom. As a prototypal spherical ultrasonic motor, we have developed successfully two kinds of spherical motor with two-degree of freedom which has a spherical body driven by two pairs of ultrasonic actuator. The spherical ultrasonic motors show good controlability and high accurate positioning.