Technologies such as MEMS and VLSI now provide system designers with new, smaller actuators and sensors components. Miniature electrical motors and mechanical parts like ball bearings are today commercially available. However, putting these elements together and finding innovative solutions to control them efficiently is still a challenge.
To help solve the electrical wiring and interconnection problems, exacerbated by the current lack of really small connectors, the circuits handling the sensors and actuators, generally a microcontroller, should be placed very close to them. Therefore, such a processor has to stay within tight size and power consumption limits. This assembly of micromechanical parts and microcontroller(s), able to receive and execute high-level commands without the help of the host processor, forms what we called an "intelligent microsystem".
The two miniature robots developed here at LAMI perfectly illustrate this concept of "intelligent micromechanism" and prove its feasibility.
Features of Jemmy, our tiny 1 cm3 robot :
Driven by two synchronous 3 mmØ RMB smoovy motors.
Four passive infrared sensors.
Embedded PIC microcontroller, which generates the 3-phase signals for both motors, performs time-to-voltage conversion to read the sensors, and communicates using a single-wire bidirectional link with an optional supervision unit. To speed up software development, all variables of the embedded processor can be read/written through this communication channel.
Precision gearing, 8 miniature ball bearings
This robot was the winner of the International Microrobot Maze Contest '97, Nagoya (Japan) in the 1 cm3 category.
Features of Inchy, our modular and autonomous 1 inch3 robot :
Three rechargeable Leclanché Ni-MH button cells provide an autonomy of 15 to 30 minutes.
Two synchronous 5 mmØ RMB smoovy motors, with which speeds of over 30 cm/s can be achieved.
Four infrared proximity sensors, which can be replaced by other devices simply by exchanging the removable top PCB.
The microcontroller performs the same tasks as in Jemmy. Furthermore, it is located on a removable PCB (at the bottom) and also can be reprogrammed in-circuit within seconds by attaching our programmer to the 5-pin connector visible on the top.
Although this robot has been designed to be autonomous, it can be controlled with the same supervision unit as Jemmy.
Note: Larger versions of these pictures can be viewed by clicking on them.
times since its creation, 28-Nov-97. · Last updated: 1-Dec-97,
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