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This paper deals with a micro mobile robot in water utilizing a PZT(Pb(Zr,Ti)O/sub 3/) as an actuator. A robot driven by a PZT requires a magnification mechanism and the effects of the resonance to enlarge the displacement of the PZT. In this paper, the authors propose a prototype micro mobile robot which has a new steering mechanism. The robot possesses a pair of legs and each leg has a pair of fins with some angle, which is essential to the improvement of the robot performance. A leg generates force both forward and backward according to frequency because the offset angle between a pair of fins works properly. Therefore, the robot can steer efficiently by combination of both modes. The size of the robot is 32 mm in length and 19 mm in width. This robot has many possible applications, such as small pipelines inspection and use in biomedical fields.
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Fukuda et al. (2002) studied this question.