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ABSTRACT: Microrobots were proposed more than 20 years ago but it has proven challenging to integrate a power system and actuators into some few mm<sup>3</sup>. There have been some attempts to create an autonomous mobile microrobot but any has been successful. Moreover, the proposed microrobots were simply mobile platforms incapable of sensing its environment and taking decisions. I-SWARM has been designed to be a real autonomous microrobot. It is powered by solar cells and provided with a locomotion unit for moving, an IR module for communicating and a contact tip for detecting near objects. Those modules are managed by an ASIC designed specifically for I-SWARM. All the electronics (power electronics, buffers, ADCs, DACs, control unit, analog transducers and an oscillator) have been embedded in the ASIC due to the limited area, 3 times 3 mm<sup>2</sup>. The ASIC is a complete system on chip (SoC) that has several features not reported before in any circuit for microrobots: communicate and act cooperatively with other I-SWARM microrobots, detect near objects, measure distance to an object, light trailing and reprogramability. This paper gives some guidelines to design integrated circuits for microrobots.
Robotics and Automation, 2009. ICRA '09. IEEE International Conference on; 06/2009
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ABSTRACT: A microrobot is a robot under a few cubic millimeters in size. Miniaturizing its components, power source, sensors and actuators, has proven challenging. As a consequence, few autonomous microrobots have been reported until recently. These are simple mobile platforms, without sensors on board. Their electronics are basically focused on motion. I-SWARM is the first autonomous microrobot, 23mm3 and 70mg, designed to move, sense, take decisions, communicate and work in cooperation with other l-SWARM micro- robots. The area and weight of a microrobot are critical and limits the use of off-the-shelf components. So, it is required to integrate in a unique chip all the electronics, including the clock source, the POR and the voltage regulators.
Solid-State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers, 2009. ISSCC 2009. IEEE International; 03/2009
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ABSTRACT: It is described the architecture of the electronics for the control of a wireless endoscopic capsule, with locomotive capabilities and advanced sensing and actuating functions. The architecture chosen provides enough flexibility to allow managing of core and switchable functions. Flexibility is assured with an on-chip micro-processor. Operation under different scenarios is possible by using a specifically designed interface chip able to manage all the required sensors and actuators.
Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2008. ICECS 2008. 15th IEEE International Conference on; 10/2008
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ABSTRACT: This paper reports on the design and implementation of a low-voltage, low-power Wake-Up circuit consisting on a Power-on-Reset module and a clock generator. No external components are used neither for the Power-on- Reset nor for the clock generation. The clock generator module is temperature compensated by applying a current limiting technique. The Wake-Up circuit has been fabricated in a 130 nm ultra-low power technology of STMicroelectronics in an area of 40 μm times 40 μm.
Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2007. ICECS 2007. 14th IEEE International Conference on; 01/2008
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ABSTRACT: This paper is focused on the main issues of designing a SoC for a completely autonomous mm<sup>3</sup>-sized microrobot. It is described how all the electronics are included in a unique chip, the special requirements in the assembly process and how the hard constraints in power consumption are managed. Power in the robot is delivered by solar cells mounted on top and two supercapacitors which act as batteries. The maximum available energy for the SoC is 400 muW for driving the robot actuators and 1 mW for data processing. The special architecture of the SoC and power awareness are required to manage the very low available power.
Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2007. ASSCC '07. IEEE Asian; 12/2007
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ABSTRACT: This paper presents a system on chip (SoC) designed specifically to control a mm<sup>3</sup>-sized microrobot called I-SWARM. The robot is intended to be part of a colony of 1000 members for studying swarm behavior in real time with real robots. The SoC offers a well-suited hardware platform to run multi-agent systems software. The SoC enables control of movement, communications and sensing. It is a platform where run multi-agent system software. With these capabilities, the robot is able for example to avoiding collisions, perform cooperative tasks, share information and, of course, solve different swarm scenarios and more complex tasks. The SoC has been fabricated with a 0.13 mum ultra low power CMOS process of STMicroelectronics and consumes less than 1.5 mW.
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2007. IROS 2007. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on; 12/2007
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ABSTRACT: This paper presents the electronics for the resonance control of a resonance contact sensor. The interface consists in an analog front-end and a digital control unit, fabricated in a CMOS standard technology of 0.13 mum from STM. The sensor is a SMART multi-layer piezo-polymer micro-cantilever working in resonance mode. The sensing is done using an electrical isolated piezo-layer of the microstructure. For the design of the electronics an electrical model of the sensor has been developed. The model is described in detail in the paper.
Circuit Theory and Design, 2007. ECCTD 2007. 18th European Conference on; 09/2007
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ABSTRACT: In this paper a low power transceiver for short-range IR-communications between robots is described. The mm<sup>3</sup>- sized robots will be deployed in an arena of A4 sheet size with controlled illumination conditions. The transceiver can manage variations of background light from point to point in the arena, interferences induced by other robots and deals with the inter-robot distance, i.e., the amplitude of the signal to be detected.
Circuits and Systems, 2007. MWSCAS 2007. 50th Midwest Symposium on; 09/2007
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ABSTRACT: A novel current source architecture is presented operating at 1.2 V for low power applications. The source has improved temperature compensation with respect to reported works. The circuit has been designed and fabricated in a 0.13mum ultra low power CMOS technology. The output current is 1 muA with measured variations less than 20 nA from RT up to 70degC.
Circuits and Systems, 2007. ISCAS 2007. IEEE International Symposium on; 06/2007
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ABSTRACT: A low power successive approximation analog-to-digital converter is presented operating at 1.2 V supply. The circuit has been designed in a 0.13 μm standard CMOS technology. The power consumption while converting is 13 μW, and in standby mode the power is reduced to 5.8 μW. The resolution is programmable between 1 to 8 bits. It can work from 500 Hz up to 50 kHz clock frequencies.
Electronics, Circuits and Systems, 2006. ICECS '06. 13th IEEE International Conference on; 01/2007
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ABSTRACT: A digital controller for a 1 cm microrobot fabricated in a 0.35mum CMOS process is presented. The robot is provided with two piezoactuators based on stick-slip and non-sliding movement: a carrier platform and a rotor to position an arm provided with a nanomanipulation tool as an AFM tip. The control signals are generated by the controller chip using the Bresenham algorithm. It has been adapted to the robot movements improving the power consumption. Power reduction is of at least 30%
Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2005; 12/2005
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ABSTRACT: The micro and nanomanipulation is one of the main challenges in our days. One approach is based on the use of a limited cluster of microrobots working in a cooperative way. For the development of the activity each robot of the cluster has assigned a different task. This implies that each robot has a different specialization. Our objective is to present in this paper the design of the electronics developed for these robots, taking into account the important challenges regarding the available area, and that the robot should possess enough autonomy. The most versatile solution is pursued because a particular electronics is not to be developed for each specialized robot. In function of the robot's specialty it will receive the necessary orders, being permeable the electronics to any case. In this paper is presented in a general way these different specializations.
Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2005. (IROS 2005). 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on; 09/2005
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ABSTRACT: A specific integrated controller for a wireless and autonomous microrobot of 1cm<sup>3</sup> is presented. The robot is equipped with an AFM probe, an injection needle, a gripper, or a micropipette. Hence, its main functionality and the controller design is focused on nanomicroscopy and cellular manipulation. The circuit manages the robot locomotion unit and its tools with nanometric resolution. Communication is done by means of the IrDA protocol implemented in the controller.
Circuits and Systems, 2005. ISCAS 2005. IEEE International Symposium on; 06/2005
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ABSTRACT: Micro and nanomanipulation are one of the key processes in bioengineering applications. Traditionally, standalone, static, expensive and big devices have been used for this purpose. In this paper, an innovative approach based on the use of a limited cluster of specialized microrobots working cooperatively is proposed and the driving electronics developed are presented. There are three types of specialized microrobots: manipulators (provided with a gripper), actuators (provided with a syringe) and scanners (provided with an AFM). Each robot is assembled and programmed depending on the specialized task that must perform in the cluster. To do that, a versatile and common electronics on board solution based on full custom integrated circuits has been developed for all the robots. Depending on the assigned task, the selected robot of the cluster gets the necessary orders to proceed whereas the rest can be programmed in a different way to do a complementary job in order to implement the cooperative approach
Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics, 2006. BioRob 2006. The First IEEE/RAS-EMBS International Conference on; 02/2001
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ABSTRACT: The objective of this paper is to present the design and validation of a cantilever-based contact sensing system for a micro-robot. Key elements of the fabrication process of the sensor and the electrical model extraction used to design the control electronics are described. The architecture used for the sensor corresponds to a micro-cantilever fabricated of piezoelectric–polyvinylidene fluoride–trifluoroethylene stacked in a multilayer structure with the possibility of both actuating and sensing. A lumped electro mechanical equivalent model of the micro-cantilever was used to design the control electronics for the cantilever. A driving signal from, the control system is used to vibrate the cantilever at its first mechanical resonance frequency. The control system contains an analog front-end to measure the sensor output signal and a digital control unit designed to track and keep the resonance frequency of the cantilever. By integrating the cantilever control system is integrated in the application specified integrated circuit used to control of the circuit is simplyfied and very compact. Experimental results show a similar behavior between the electrical model and the fabricated system, and the deviations between the model and the measured structure are analyzed. The results also show that the designed control system is capable to detect the resonance frequency of the system and to actuate despite small deviations in process parameters of different batches of cantilevers. The whole system was designed to be integrated into an autonomous micro-robot, although it can be used in other applications.
Sensors and Actuators A: Physical.
