<title>Integrated five-degrees-of-freedom piezoelectric micromanipulator</title>

Abstract

The authors have developed new multidegrees of freedom (dof) piezoelectric micromotors using both stationary bending modes and traveling wave technology. These devices are respectively based on the conversion, through frictional contact, of bending vibrations sustained in one or several vibrators into rigid body displacements of a moving element. They have allowed the design and the development of a micromanipulator with five degrees of freedom composed of stationary wave type linear translators (2 dof) and traveling wave type spherical micromotors (3 dof). These two motors can be driven reversibly in both directions with linear speeds between one mm/s<SUP>-1</SUP> and few 10<SUP>-1</SUP> ms<SUP>-1</SUP>. The paper shows however that micrometer steps can be activated for micropositioning applications without displacement limitations. A prototype of an autonomous mobile minirobot integrating a behavior-based intelligence is realized in order to study the behavior designing problem of a multiple robot system incorporating a behavior-based dynamic cooperation strategy for multiple behavior-based robots.