Design of a compact camera-orienting mechanism with flexural pan and tilt axes

This paper presents the design and prototype of a camera-orienting mechanism. Bio-inspired actuators and mechanisms have been developed to pan and tilt a camera with comparable characteristics as a human eye. To meet the stringent space/weight requirement of mobile robotic applications, a compact camera-orienting mechanism is proposed. We specifically aim at matching the size of a human eye. Through the arrangement of two parallel placed actuators and flexible mechanisms, uncoupled pan and tilt motions can be provided in a smaller space. The flexible mechanisms utilize the deflection of flexible beams to replace the kinematic joints; thus they have fewer parts and can be easily rescaled to fit a smaller space. After a formulation to find the optimal mechanism configuration, the design is verified by implementing a prototype. The novel orienting mechanism is expected to serve as an alternative for robotic vision devices.