PRE-curved PVDF/PI unimorph structures for biomimic soft crawling actuators
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Wu, Yichuan; Ho, Kong Y.; Kariya, Kento; Xu, Renxiao; Cai, Weihua; Zhong, Junwen; Ma, Yuan; Zhang, Min; Wang, Xiaohao; Lin, Liwei
- Source
- 2018 IEEE Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS), 2018 IEEE. :581-584 Jan, 2018
- Subject
- Bioengineering
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
Photonics and Electrooptics
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Actuators
Films
Legged locomotion
Substrates
Dielectric loss measurement
Power demand
Plastics
PVDF
unimorph
pre-curved
residual stress
inchworm
soft actuators
- Language
- ISSN
- 2160-1968
This work reports a pre-curved piezoelectric unimorph structure to have large curvature changes under a relatively low driving voltage as a soft inchworm actuator. Several unique accomplishments have been demonstrated: (1) polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF)-based actuator using the lowest driving voltage in published reports of 200 Volts peak to peak; (2) electrically-driven biomimetic soft crawling actuation with a moving speed up to 1.9mm/s on a rough surface; and (3) operations under low power consumptions of 150μW/cm 2 . As such, this new class of soft crawling actuator could open up new opportunities for the actuation of soft robots.