Wireless power, drive, and data transfer for ultrasonic motors

Abstract

Wireless motors offer significant advantages in terms of installation flexibility and cable-free features but inevitably require multiple power semiconductors and electronic components at the receiver side to achieve wireless movement. Moreover, motor speed information is difficult to capture due to technical impediments in realizing wireless speed-sensorless communication. To address these issues, a novel wireless ultrasonic motor (USM) system with highly integrated wireless power, drive, and data transfer (WPD 2 T) is newly proposed in this article. Innovatively, the proposed WPD 2 T takes advantage of inherent capacitive characteristics of the USM to simultaneously realize wireless power transfer, wireless drive control, and sensorless speed information communication using a highly integrated magnetic coupler (IMC) with series inductors only, thus greatly simplifying the system structure and improving reliability, flexibility and compactness. Promisingly, the proposed WPD 2 T system exhibits great potential for miniaturization and biomedical implantable millirobots due to its minimalist structure and flexible controllability. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results are conducted to verify the feasibility of the proposed WPD 2 T system.