Patent ID: 7554715

Claim:
A mirror driver comprising: a mirror having a reflective surface reflecting incident light thereon; a pair of mechanical beams diametrically opposed to each other with the mirror inbetween as viewed along a reference line parallel to the reflective surface; an actuator imparting bending motions to the pair of beams, respectively; and a pair of joints integrally coupling the pair of beams and the mirror to each other, with less rigidity to resist deformation than rigidity of the pair of beams and the mirror, for allowing conversion of the bending motions of the pair of beams into a rigid-body motion of the mirror without inducing an angular oscillation about the reference line, wherein each of the pair of joints is configured to include a beam-side beam portion proximate to a corresponding one of the pair of beams, and a mirror-side beam portion proximate to a corresponding one of opposite ends of the mirror, such that the beam-side beam portion and the mirror-side beam portion are coupled to each other integrally and non-rectilinearly, the beam-side beam portion extends from one of opposite ends of the corresponding beam, which is proximate to the mirror, the one end of the corresponding beam being a mirror-side end of the corresponding beam, the mirror-side end of the corresponding beam has lateral faces opposite to each other in a width direction of the corresponding beam, the beam-side beam portion of each joint includes a pair of coextending beam-side beam elements, and the pair of beam-side beam elements are attached to the opposite lateral faces of the mirror-side end of the corresponding beam, respectively, with the pair of beam-side beam elements being spaced apart in a direction parallel to the width direction of the corresponding beam.