Bi-directional Flyback Converter Circuit Design for Flapping-wing Microrobots

Abstract

Scientists and Engineers have shown great interest in developing biologically inspired flapping-wing micro aerial robots that mimic the behavior of aerial insects. One of the major design challenges for sub-gram aerial robots is to achieve power autonomy. Over the past decade, numerous designs of sub-gram aerial robots have been proposed, with most of them using piezoelectric bimorphs actuators. Recently, Professor Yufeng Chen’s group has designed and used dielectric elastomer actuators(DEAs) in their aerial micro-robots, which have achieved marvelous collision resilience and acrobatic maneuvers. However, powering the DEAs requires a much higher voltage than the piezoelectric bimorphs actuators. This work addresses the issue of powering these DEAs with minimal weight carried by the powering circuit itself. The bidirectional flyback topology is chosen and explored, and a complete simulation and analysis are presented. It can be shown that with a careful component selection and a careful pulse frequency modulation, the bidirectional flyback converter can achieve a much better power consumption than a tapped boost circuit while maintaining the same or better level of performance.