Modeling and Control of a 3-degree-of-freedom Walking Microrobot

This paper describes a walking microrobot with 512 thermobimorph polyimide actuator legs. Eight groups of unidirectional legs can be separately controlled to produce planar motion with three degrees of freedom. Wave-like gaits propel the robot at speeds of up to 250 μm/sec while consuming approximately 1.6W power. Finite element methods are employed to investigate the force generation and the thermal characteristics of the robot. Results from simulation and experiments lead to a compact model for the relationship between temperature and velocity of the robot.