Patent ID: 8077588

Claim:
A driving apparatus comprising: a stage structure on which a medium having a small recording domain is mounted; and a facing structure which is provided with at least one small action structure, which faces the medium, for performing a predetermined action to the medium, and which is displaced relatively on a predetermined flat surface with respect to said stage structure, said facing structure comprising a facing-side position detecting unit for detecting a relative reference position of said facing structure with respect to said stage structure, said stage structure comprising a stage-side position detecting unit for detecting a relative reference position of said facing structure with respect to said stage structure, wherein: said facing structure comprises a probe for performing at least one of recording of information onto the medium and reproduction of the information recorded on the medium, as the action structure, the probe performs at least one of the recording and the reproduction by applying an electric field to the medium, the medium comprises a back electrode, the facing-side position detecting unit comprises a position detecting electrode, and the stage-side position detecting unit comprises a position detecting electrode which has electrical continuity with the back electrode.