Energy harvesting is the process of foraging electrical energy from energy sources available in the environment. This paper reviews energy harvesting technology using PZT as the specific piezoceramic material with its modules to determine the capacitance for optimal energy-storage in piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting (VEH) systems . It reviews various applications of piezoelectric energ...

This paper describes a dynamical strategy for releasing micro objects picked-up by means of adhesion forces. While sticking effects are used in order to capture an object by adequately choosing a high surface energy constitutive material for the end-effector, these same effects handicap considerably the release. We propose to take advantage of the inertial effects of both the end-effector and t...

This paper presents the investigation of a novel concept involving the combination of piezoelectric and new thin-film battery technology to form multifunctional self-charging, load-bearing energy harvesting devices. The proposed self-charging structures contain both power generation and energy storage capabilities in a multilayered, composite platform consisting of active piezoceramic layers fo...

1 . I N T R O D U C T I O N Microrobotics researches require to operate on autonomous devices with simple design and limited costs and energy consumption, even if this fact limits the possible tasks of each single robot. In the last few years the interest in micro mechatronic systems is increasing and several different kind of microrobots have been designed [1], [2],[3]. Applications of these r...

A high-voltage sensor was developed by driving optical fibre Bragg gratings, mechanically fixed along the radial direction, with a conventional piezoelectric disc. A wavelength shift modulation is obtained as a result of the converse piezoelectric effect. The measured output signal is linear. The voltage upper limit depends on the type and thickness of the piezoceramic. A sensor built with a di...

A novel transducer for active or passive sensing has been developed and tested experimentally. It features a steel wire acting as a wave guide between a piezoceramic element and the structure under test. Some advantages of the wireguided transducer include its applicability to structures operating at high temperature, which otherwise preclude the surface mounting of piezoceramics, its small con...

This paper describes the design and construction of two ultrasonic Doppler transducers using Finite Element Analysis for blood flow measurement. These transducers were constructed using as sensing element, commercial 8 MHz PIC255 piezoceramic discs, EPO-TEK 301 and Rexolite 4422 as backing and matching layer materials respectively. The objective of this work was to design and construct two sing...