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Smart power integrated circuit for piezoceramic-based microrobot

Conference Paper · October 2001

Source: IEEE Xplore

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 Smart Power Integrated Circuit for piezoceramic-based microrobot

E. Montané, S.A. Bota, J. López-Sánchez, P. Miribel-Català,

M. Puig-Vidal, J. Samitier
Instrumentation & Communication Systems. Electronics Dept.,
University of Barcelona. C/ Martí Franquès 1, Barcelona (Spain).
Sbota@el.ub.es

Abstract move the robot in the x- and y- directions and rotate

around the z-axis.
A BCD technology (Bipolar, CMOS, DMOS) was To assure the stability of the structure, each unit is
used to implement a high voltage smart power composed by six three-axial piezoceramic elements. The
integrated circuit in order to obtain a fully integrated six active elements in the micro-positioning unit act as a
Smart Piezoactuator Unit (SPU) for a new generation of sort of piezo-legs while the other six in the micro-
microrobots. Micropositioning and micromanipulation manipulation unit act as piezo-fingers to move the ball.
units have been developed combining properly 6 SPUs.
For each SPU four power drivers are needed. To fulfil
the restrictions imposed by the desired robot size, the
four drives together with their protection circuitry and
a control interface based on a serial protocol have been
integrated in an ASIC.

1. Introduction
Today, there is an increase of applications ranging
from biology to microsystem technology that are
demanding high-precision handling techniques [1]. A
lot of these tasks have been carried out by humans, but
manual capabilities are restricted to certain tolerances.
The cm3 sized microrobot, developed within the
ESPRIT project MINIMAN [2][3], consists essentially
of two piezoelectric-based units where the principle of
motion is based on controlled stepping by bimorph legs
and fingers (Fig. 1).
Robot fingers and legs have been implemented using
three-axial piezoceramic elements [3]. The
characteristics of these elements are crucial in order to
design the power and control electronic circuits for the
microrobot. These include: Their frequency of resonance
(40 kHz), the capacitance of the element (around 15 nF)
and the biasing voltage (around 50V).
2. The MINIMAN robot
The MINIMAN robot is based on two identical units:
the micromanipulation unit and the micropositioning
unit. The micromanipulation unit is able to rotate a
bearing ball with an end-effector around three
orthogonal axes. The micropositioning unit is able to
Figure 1. The MINIMAN cm3 sized Microrobot
The active elements in each units need to be
controlled in order to obtain the desired movement.
Each active element has four separated electrodes that
will be controlled independently to produce the desired
movement in the x, y plane (each one of these electrodes
needs a signal shifted 90º from each other). This will
result in a total of 24 connections for each unit (a total
of 48 in the robot).
3. Driving strategy
Since the microrobot should be able to perform
different movements, it is necessary to define a proper
driving strategy according to the desired action [4].
Two types of high voltage signals, sinusoidal or
trapezoidal, have been evaluated to drive the active
piezoceramic elements. Voltage amplitude ranged from
0 to 50 V. Each piezoceramic element will move in an
elliptical trajectory when sinusoidal signals are applied.
Using a trapezoidal signal, the piezoceramic element
follows a rhombic trajectory. From trapezoidal voltage
waveforms, some advantages arises:
§ Tangential velocity of the active element will be 5.1 Power drivers
constant during the drive cycle.
§ Using the same maximum biasing voltage The piezoelectric materials used to build up the
amplitude, a longer vertical distance is achieved. microrobot units can be modelled as capacitors with
§ The current will be constant during driving, nominal capacitance value of 15 nF. Specific power
because it is proportional to the voltage derivative. drivers have been designed taking into account the
following specifications:
§ They have to supply signal waveforms with a
4. Smart Piezoactuator Unit maximum voltage amplitude of 50V.
Is necessary to supply high voltage signals to the 48 § They have to supply enough current to charge and
electrodes per microrobot to define a movement. discharge this equivalent capacitance. The
CMOS standard integrated technologies are not frequency of the power voltage signal is lower than
capable to withstand this required biasing, so, usually, 250 Hz, due to mechanical restrictions.
driver circuits for these piezoactuators are based on
hybrid solutions using discrete components. As a result
of these hybrid solutions, is very difficult to reach the
desired integration level to place the drivers on the
small-sized robot platform. As a consequence,
microrobot motion and precision performances are
seriously limited by the mechanical stress induced by
the electrical link (more than 50 power wires in our Figure 2. Driver architecture.
case) between each actuator unit and their driver unit.
An ASIC with four power drivers and control has
been designed using a BCD technology. This IC is
capable to drive properly the four electrodes of a three-
axial piezoelectric actuator (piezo-leg or piezo-finger).
Our goal is place this IC with the actuator, defining the
so called Smart Piezoactuator Unit (SPU). Each
microrobot is based on 12 SPUs (six for the
micropositioning unit and six for the micromanipulation
unit), as a consequence, 12 identical ICs have to be
placed onto each robot platform.
The desired robot movement can be obtained
programming each SPU through a common digital
serial signal. To minimise the number of input wires,
and properly distribute the driving signals to all the 12
SPUs, a serial protocol has been defined to send the Figure 3. Transistor level schematic of the
trapezoidal or sinusoidal waveforms, the binary-coded designed High Voltage Operational Amplifier.
waveform will be converted to a high voltage driving
signal by the driver. In order to achieve the desired § They need to interface with an 8 bits input data
integration level, this Digital Interface must be also coming from a digital stage.
implemented in the SPU ASIC. This is necessary to Taking into account these specifications, the driver
optimise the routing and assembling process of the block (Fig. 2) is formed by a low-voltage digital-to-
whole system. analogue converter (DAC) plus an analogue buffer,
from the analogue library provided by the foundry, and
5. SPU ASIC Design a full custom High Voltage Operational Amplifier
(HVOA) [7].
An available commercial 1.2 ì m BDC technology The HVOA (Fig. 3) is based on a classical cross-
(Bipolar, DMOS, CMOS) from MIETEC-ALCATEL coupled differential input pair operational amplifier [8]
has been selected to design and implement this specific adapted to work under high voltage conditions. The use
Smart Power Integrated Circuits. Using this technology of this differential input amplifier instead of classical
it is possible to integrate, in the same substrate, both single common source stage has been considered in
power and control circuitry [5][6]. Low power analogue order to improve their driving capabilities. A source
and digital blocs have been implemented using standard follower has been included in the input stage in order to
library cells. Power drivers have been full-custom increase the input voltage range in such way to be able
designed. to achieve a proper input voltage range (low-voltage
inputs).
 An output stage based on a half bridge configuration The control unit enables the proper data register,
has been implemented using high voltage power regarding the kind of information we are sending. In the
transistors in order to deliver a maximum output current S0 state the system is waiting to start the process. In the
of 16mA. first step (state S1), the SPU name information is sent,
D/A1 D/A2 D/A3 D/A4 and the SPUR register is updated. This information is
8bits 8bits 8bits 8bits shifted to the 12 IC SPUR registers. Because the ASICs
DE DE DE DE
DR1 DR2 DR3 DR4 are identical, each IC needs a different label stored in
the SPUR register.
B1 8bits B2 8bits B3 8bits B4 8bits
Furthermore, all the other information is distributed
BusMux1 BusMux2 BusMux3 BusMux4
in parallel to the ICs. At the S2 state 3 bits are sent,
these bits, used to define the desired movement, are
32 bits B 8bits
stored in the XYR register. The signal voltage
Din
Clk Shift register SR (32bits, 8bits per phase) waveform is sent using a Time Division Multiplexing
technique. This process is done in the S3 and S4 states.
SE ME
Control XYR (3b) In the S3 state one phase of the 4 phases is stored in the
C DE
Unit Din Logic shift resister. When the type of movement is changed,
Clk Block
SPUR (4b)
SPUE the system goes to S5. If the process is not finished, the
state machine goes back to S2 state else goes to the
Figure 4. Serial interface unit block diagram initial state S0.
The other three phases are computed and presented
5.2. Digital serial interface circuitry to DACs, according to the received information.
The Digital serial interface circuitry is presented in Fig.
4. In order to send the information to the robot, three
wires are used: clock (Clk), control (C) and data (Din).
Control signal and clock define the flow of a control
state machine (Fig. 5). All the information about the
SPU label, kind of movement and the voltage signal
waveform are sent through the data input wire and
stored in registers.

Table 1. digital data registers

Name Register
SR Shift register for serial voltage
signal value (32 bits, 8bit per phase)
DR Register voltage signal value (8 bit Figure 6. SPU Integrated circuit photomicrograph
per phase) (the circuit includes 4 independent drivers, with
SPUR SPU name (4 bits) four independent DACs and digital logic gates).
XYR Type of movement (3 bits)
5.3. ASIC implementation and SPU assembling
S0 0 Special precautions have been taken for layout
1
design, in order to avoid substrate coupling effects
between digital, low-voltage analogue and high voltage
S1 1 power blocs. To minimise latch-up, low voltage
0 transistors are separated from the high voltage
transistors using guard rings.
S2 1
The resulting ASIC sizes are 5600*3300 ì m2. The
0 photomicrograph of the IC is presented in Fig. 6. This
1
0 1
allows the assembling of the 12 ASICs on the robot
S3
platform using a suitable High-Density packaging
0
1 technology [9].
S4

0
6. Experimental results
S5 The measured HVOA characteristics show an offset
Figure 5. Control unit state flow voltage of 10 mV. This value can be assumed in our
 application. A dominant pole has been found at 15.3
kHz, close to the desired cut-off frequency.
The complete electronic system has been tested using
a serial input data string to define an stepped ramp
(corresponding to a trapezoidal driving waveform) and
measuring the voltage at the output driver loaded with a
capacitor of 15 pF. Results are shown in Fig. 7
(a)
(b)
Figure 7. Experimental measurements. (a) The
output of two DACs, shifted 90º, are represented.
(b) low-voltage DAC output from 1 to 4 volts (up)
and the corresponding high-voltage dirver output
from 0 to 50 V (down)
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7. Conclusions
A piezoelectric-based microrobot with sizes around 1
cm3 is under development. An integrated circuit
implemented using a Smart Power technology is
designed to create the Smart Piezoactuator Unit in the
microrobot platform. This integrated circuit contains 4
voltage power drivers and digital control system with a
serial interface protocol. The frequency of power voltage
signals is limited to 250 Hz. We expect to reach a speed
of displacement around 5 mm/s.
Acknowledgements
The authors want to acknowledge the MINIMAN
consortium project members, and the support of the
CiCYT TAP 98-0585-C03-03 and ESPRIT project nº
33915.
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