Large-Workspace Polyarticulated Micro-Structures Based-On Folded Silica for Tethered Nanorobotics

Abstract

Origami structures have a wide range of applications in robotics and have been intensively investigated by researchers in recent years.However, enabling sub-millimeter structures is an open question especially because of the lack of small enough joints. In this paper, compliant joints made of Silica by Focused Ion Beam (FIB) folding are proposed to achieve continuous, highly repeatable large motions. A polyarticulated structure including 3 joints is especially studied following a series of robotic analyses and experimentations to quantify the performances. The size of the structure firstly appears disruptive because smaller than 50 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\mu }{\rm m}$</tex-math></inline-formula> in typical overall length, i.e. less than the radius of an optical fiber. Secondly, the structure can achieve a planar workspace of 57 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\mu }{\rm m}$</tex-math></inline-formula> squared, which is significantly large compared to the structure dimension. Thirdly, repetitive movements performed at randomly selected positions, demonstrate an excellent repeatability standard deviations of 227 nm and 216 nm in x and y directions, respectively. These results together state the interest of novel polyarticulated structures resulting from the FIB folding as a basis for the next tethered nanorobotics generation.