Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

This dissertation presents work on components and actuators for silicon-based walking centimeter-scale robots. The focus on this work was on the actuators used to drive these robots and the linkages that make the basic structure of the robot leg.

Pin-joints are used as the basic unit of the leg linkages. The pin-joints were tested in terms of robustness and demonstrated high maximum tensile loads of over 5mN and compressive loads in excess of 100mN.

Electrostatic inchworm motors were the...

Predictions of the proliferation of hundreds of billions of connected wireless devices have yet to come true. The economics of such deployments becoming feasible require that current wireless modules become smaller, cheaper, and use less power. A typical wireless device combines a RF System-on-Chip with multiple frequency references, passive components, anantenna, and a battery on a printed circuit board. The Single Chip Mote project aims toreduce the size, weight, power, and cost of these devices by eliminating the off...

Both the accuracy of the clocks and ability of filters to achieve bandwidths small enough to select individual channels depend heavily on the accuracy and precision to which the frequency-setting devices they rely on are constructed. Inevitably, fabrication tolerances are finite, which means the ability to attain the highest performance relies on trimming or tuning. This dissertation focuses on methods by which voltage-controlled frequency tuning of capacitively-transduced micromechanical resonators make possible 1) an ultra-compact, low-power 32.768-kHz micromechanical clock...