Characterization and Design of A Hollow Cylindrical Ultrasonic Motor

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hollow cylindrical ultrasonic motor prototype that offers compactness, high speed, and torque, suitable for MRI-compatible robotics, with experimental results demonstrating its performance under specific conditions.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel hollow cylindrical ultrasonic motor design with experimental validation, reducing size and complexity for direct drive applications.

Findings

Achieved 383.33 rpm rotation speed

Generated 57.35 mNm torque

Operated under 282 Vpp driving voltage

Abstract

Piezoelectric ultrasonic motors perform the advantages of compact design, faster reaction time, and simpler setup compared to other motion units such as pneumatic and hydraulic motors, especially its non-ferromagnetic property makes it a perfect match in MRI-compatible robotics systems compared to traditional DC motors. Hollow shaft motors address the advantages of being lightweight and comparable to solid shafts of the same diameter, low rotational inertia, high tolerance to rotational imbalance due to low weight, and tolerance to high temperature due to low specific mass. This article presents a prototype of a hollow cylindrical ultrasonic motor (HCM) to perform direct drive, eliminate mechanical non-linearity, and reduce the size and complexity of the actuator or end effector assembly. Two equivalent HCMs are presented in this work, and under 50g prepressure on the rotor, it performed 383.3333rpm rotation speed and 57.3504mNm torque output when applying 282$V_{pp}$ driving voltage.