Design of a 2-DOF Low Power Microrobot

A two degree-of-freedom microrobot is designed in the Berkeley 3-layer SOI/DRIE process. The microrobot uses electrostatic actuation to minimize power consumption. To create out-of-plane motion, which translates to lateral movement for the robot, a variation on a torsional resonator is used. For inplane motion, the microrobot uses a simple electrostatic gap-closing actuator to pivot the microrobot leg around its axis. The resulting microrobot has legs that are 40μm high and can move at theoretical speeds of 2mm/sec. The microrobot can also rotate at 1.5 ̊/sec. Total power consumption given the 64 legs in a 1mm piece of silicon is 1.46μW.