FAVbot: An Autonomous Target Tracking Micro-Robot with Frequency Actuation Control
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Jan 26, 2025
Abstract
Robotic autonomy at centimeter scale requires compact and
miniaturization-friendly actuation integrated with sensing and neural network
processing assembly within a tiny form factor. Applications of such systems
have witnessed significant advancements in recent years in fields such as
healthcare, manufacturing, and post-disaster rescue. The system design at this
scale puts stringent constraints on power consumption for both the sensory
front-end and actuation back-end and the weight of the electronic assembly for
robust operation. In this paper, we introduce FAVbot, the first autonomous
mobile micro-robotic system integrated with a novel actuation mechanism and
convolutional neural network (CNN) based computer vision - all integrated
within a compact 3-cm form factor. The novel actuation mechanism utilizes
mechanical resonance phenomenon to achieve frequency-controlled steering with a
single piezoelectric actuator. Experimental results demonstrate the
effectiveness of FAVbot's frequency-controlled actuation, which offers a
diverse selection of resonance modes with different motion characteristics. The
actuation system is complemented with the vision front-end where a camera along
with a microcontroller supports object detection for closed-loop control and
autonomous target tracking. This enables adaptive navigation in dynamic
environments. This work contributes to the evolving landscape of neural
network-enabled micro-robotic systems showing the smallest autonomous robot
built using controllable multi-directional single-actuator mechanism.
