A Digital Electromagnetic Conveyance Device: Design, Modeling and Experimentation

This paper presents a digital electromagnetic conveyance device for micro or desktop factories. The device consists of seven digital actuators organized in the form of a honeycomb architecture to realize collaborative conveyance tasks. Each actuator of an array includes one mobile permanent magnet, and six fixed permanent magnets. The mobile part of the actuator is able to reach twelve discrete positions distributed in three-dimensional space. To realize the conveyance operation, two different approaches are proposed: stick-slip and lift-mode approaches. An analytical model has been realized to calculate the magnetic and electromagnetic forces which has been used to design the device. Some experiments have then been performed and the ability to realize a conveyance task using the two approaches has been validated. The total time required to realize a conveyance task for different current values has also been characterized.