Insect-inspired drive strategy substantially improves the performance of a piezo motor

Bioinspiration has been a driving force behind the design of various solid-state actuators. While in nature the structure of an animal and the control mechanisms have co-evolved and perform best when used together, biologically-inspired actuators often employ oversimplified technical drive solutions. The piezo motor discussed in this work is an example of such a device. It consists of four leg-like elements which need to interact with a ceramic bar in a stable way. This work presents a novel bioinspired drive mechanism for this motor. Specifically, an architectural mapping between a model of walking in insects and the piezo motor is proposed. In the insect-inspired strategy, all piezoelectric legs are allowed to be driven independently and not in pairs as opposed to the classical drive strategy. Based on the physical model of motor dynamics, it is shown that the insect-inspired approach substantially improves the performance of the motor in terms of its force generating capabilities as well as maximal drive velocity. Furthermore, the novel approach is described by a moderate number of intuitive parameters and produces a variety of velocity-dependent gaits as known from the research on animals.