Microrobotics Using Composite Materials_The Micromechanical Flying Insect Thorax.pdfVIP

Microrobotics Using Composite Materials: The Micromechanical Flying Insect Thorax? R. J. Wood S. Avadhanula M. Menon R. S. Fearing Department of EECS, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 {rjwood, srinath, manas, ronf}@robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu Abstract The use of high performance composite materials provides a substantial performance improvement for microrobotics. Such materials have great benefits over common MEMs materials such as better frac- ture toughness and fatigue properties than semicon- ductors, and higher stiffness to weight ratios than most metals. Composite structures yield remarkable improvements in microrobotic links and joints, as well as greater performance actuators while allow- ing complicated microrobotic mechanisms to be easily rapid prototyped. The use of such materials in the construction of the 4DOF, 26 joint Micromechani- cal Flying Insect has reduced the thorax inertia by a factor of 3 and given a 20% increase in resonant fre- quency over previous designs while cutting construc- tion time from weeks to days. 1 Introduction The Micromechanical Flying Insect (MFI) project [2, 7, 11, 12, 15, 16] aims to create an autonomous flying robotic insect the size of a housefly. To do this, biologists have identified mechanisms in real insects which are necessary for flight [5], thus solving the mystery of how insects produce adequate lift for sta- ble flight. The results show that to produce enough lift, while also having a structure which is capable of creating thrust vectors necessary for control of the insect, there are a number of key kinematic and dy- namic requirements. The MFI wings must be ca- pable of independently going through a wing stroke of 120?, while being able to rotate 90? at a reso- nant frequency of 150Hz. To do this the body of the MFI consists of two wings, each driven by sepa- rate thorax structures. The thorax structures consist of two actuators, two mechanically amplifying four- bar structures, and a differential. Sin