Optimisation of a Multi-Functional Piezoelectric Component for a Climbing Robot

Abstract

Force sensors on climbing robots give important information to the robot control system, however, off-the-shelf sensors can be both heavy and bulky. We investigate the optimisation of a lightweight integrated force sensor made of piezoelectric material for the multi-limbed climbing robot MAGNETO. We focus on three design objectives for this piezoelectric component. The first is to develop a lightweight component with minimal compliance that can be embedded in the foot of the climbing robot. The second objective is to ensure that the component has sensing capability to replace the off-the-shelf force sensor. Finally, the component should be robust for a range of climbing configurations. To this end, we focus on a compliance minimisation problem with constrained voltage and volume fraction. We present structurally optimised designs that satisfy the three main design criteria and improve upon baseline results from a reference component. Our computational study demonstrates that the optimisation of embedded robotic components with piezoelectric sensing is worthy of future investigation.