A Simplified Inchworm Rotary Piezoelectric Actuator Inspired by Finger Twist: Design, Modeling, and Experimental Evaluation

Inchworm rotary piezoelectric actuators (PAs) have been widely utilized in the ultraprecision rotary positioning mechanisms because of their high precision and theoretical no backward motions. Existing inchworm rotary PAs are still bothered with the complicated structures driven by at least three piezoelectric stacks (PSAs) and relatively low speed. In this article, inspired by the finger structure, we present a simplified inchworm rotary PA driven by only two PSAs. The human finger twist motion is first imitated and utilized to increase the rotation from one to four times in one cycle, which improves the output speed and no backward motion can be observed in the rotation curves. Under a voltage of 150 V and a frequency of 20 Hz, the actuator achieved a maximum rotation speed of 0.16 rad/s, a carrying load of 0.5 kg and an output torque of 0.05 N·m. Furthermore, this actuator achieved a high step repeatability in the large scale of 360°, whose maximum deviation is less than 0.8 mrad.