Abstract
A miniature moving robot composed of plastic injection-molded pantograph mechanisms based on different modes of resonance is proposed. Plastic injection molding techniques and printing by using molds are effective to make small parts in micromachines and MEMS devices. The proposed injection-molded pantograph mechanisms have large-deflective hinges as pair. Because the deflective hinges has no clearance, propagation of vibration goes through mechanisms easily. Vibration is regarded as an effective way to drive micromachines in consideration of simplicity of mechanisms, availability of small PZT actuators as a driving element, power density, and prevention of a sticking phenomenon between small parts. In this reports, basic vibration behaviors of a molded pantograph mechanism were investigated experimentally. Then, a three-leg moving robot composed of molded pantograph mechanisms and PZT oscillators was fabricated. In our experiments, even only one leg could drive the robot independently in forward(37mm/s at 8.0Hz), backward(54mm/s at 8.4kHz), and rotation directions(0.23rad/s at 3.0kHz) with different input frequencies.
