Design and Analysis of a Micro Actuating Mechanism Driving Multi-Degree of Freedom

This paper presents design concept and implementation of a micro actuating mechanism that uses a single drive to operate many degrees of freedom. The challenge of this research is to reduce the complexity of the multi-dof actuator mechanism in order to optimize its size and weight so that it is small and light enough to be implemented on other robots or automatic systems where mobility is needed. For example, on the development of the automatic tuning system of multi-string music instruments like piano or harp, instead of implementing one actuator to tune each string, this paper proposed an actuator mechanism that uses a single motor to tune several strings at a time. In the proposed actuator mechanism, a new tiny magnetic clutch is designed to control the direction of the rotation. The worm gear trains are selected to hold the position of the rotation with self-locking ability, which helps prevent rotation when the clutch is disengaged. The size and weight of the mechanism are optimized to fit properly on the musical stringed instrument. In this paper, the prototype and analysis of performance of the proposed mechanism is presented.