Human eye is one the most interesting subject for development of robotic versions that crave to mimic it perfectly. On the same lines a new robotic eye has been developed by researcher Joshua Schultz (Ph.D. candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology) which replicates the muscular motion of human eye. The eye mimics muscular movement of eye using piezoelectric material and this could be an important research for other applications like MRI guided surgery or robotic rehabilitation too. The robotic eye has a piezoelectric cellular actuator making use of novel biologically inspired technology for the robot’s eye movement.
These piezoelectric actuators have motion generators that perfectly emulate the musculature of biological organisms and embody the properties of biological muscle down to the cellular structure. For example in the human eye muscles are controlled by neural impulses and the robotic eye developed by Joshua uses kinematics. The unique property of piezoelectric material to expand and contract with variation in electric current makes them perfect for such kind of application.
This new research is a part of the Georgia Tech team’s high speed approach including the single degree of freedom camera positioner to show how camera positioner can be used to for control of biologically inspired actuator technology. Each piezoelectric muscle like actuator is nested in hierarchical set of strain amplifying system and a mathematical concept is used to predict performance of the nested structure.
Via: CrazyEngineers
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