A traveling wave is generated on the elastic medium, by the excitation of the piezoelectric element at ultrasonic frequencies, to drive a rotor via friction force. Because of the compactness of piezoelectric elements, the overall dimension of the motor is small compared to motors driven by other methods. This enables the motor to be employed in many new applications that have dimension constrains, such as medical equipments and precision optical equipment. The objectives of this research are to study the basic actuating principle of piezoelectric elements creating linear motions, the design of linear motor components and the control and sensing of the motor. In the future, a micro linear actuators with large displacement will be designed based on the same actuating principle.
Piezoelectric valves are compact and can provide flow rate similar to solenoid valves.
The objective of this research is to design and fabricate a new generation of pneumatic valves that will be employed in the robotic endoscope for human surgeries. For example, a modular robot with only two to three DOFs is capable of performing the same electronic part insertion task that normally requires a 4-DOF conventional manipulator. In this way, the complexity of the entire system can be reduced and is able to operate at higher bandwidth and throughput. The objectives of this research are to formulate efficient RISC algorithms for modular robots, to test the algorithm on a commercial modular robot testbed and to design a series of novel link and joint modules based on RISC concept. The proposed RISC modular robot will facilitate the effective use of the interchangeable modules for any given task.