A Power Electronics Unit to Drive Piezoelectric Actuators for Flying Microrobots

Citation:

Mario Lok, Xuan Zhang, Elizabeth Helblinh, Robert Wood, David Brooks, and Gu Wei. 9/28/2015. “A Power Electronics Unit to Drive Piezoelectric Actuators for Flying Microrobots.” In IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC). Publisher's Version

Abstract:

This paper describes a power electronics unit (PEU) for an insect-scale flapping-wing robot. Three power saving techniques used in the actuator driver of the PEU — envelope tracking, dynamic common mode, and charge sharing — reduce power consumption while retaining weight benefits of an inductor-less linear driver. A pair of actuator driver ICs energize four 15nF capacitor loads, which represent the piezoelectric actuators of a flapping-wing robot. The PEU consumes 290mW, which translates to 37% lower power compared to a design without these power saving techniques.
Last updated on 04/25/2022