2018 15th International Conference on Ubiquitous Robots (UR)

Hawaii Convention Center, Hawai'i, USA, June 27-30, 2018

Wirelessly Powered Coil-Type Robot with

2D Translational and 1D Rotational Self-Actuation Ability
Jun Lee, Jung-Ik Ha
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
E-mail: leejun1672@snu.ac.kr, jungikha@snu.ac.kr

Abstract— In this paper, a new type of system in which a
mover can actuate itself and regulate its DC-link voltage with
wirelessly transferred power is proposed. The system is
composed of two orthogonal stators and a mover which also has
two orthogonal coils wound on it. The stators synthesize steady
magnetic field in the control area by controlling three currents of
different frequencies. Each stator controls one AC current, and
one of the stators controls a DC current together. Using the
property that a magnetized object receives force and torque in a
magnetic field, the mover actuates itself by modifying its
magnetic moment in the steady magnetic field generated by
stators. The DC field is used for alignment of the mover, two AC
fields are used for controlling the translational movement of the
mover, and one of the AC fields is also utilized for supplying the
power consumed on the mover. The proposed actuation system
and control method are verified with a simulation.
Keywords – Actuation system, self-actuation, 3-DOF, wireless
power transfer.
I. INTRODUCTION
There have been many researches about actuation
systems with wireless power transfer function. However,
systems in which a rotor or mover can move with multiple
DOF has rarely proposed. Studies about designing and
controlling a magnetized object with 6 DOF are done, but
the systems only handle a passive mover [1]–[5]. Based on
the principles of the preceding researches, we have
proposed a 1D system in which a mover can control its
position and DC-link voltage with current flowing on its
coil in a steady sinusoidal magnetic field generated by
stators [6].
In this paper, using two coils in both stator-side and
mover-side, the mover gets control ability of its position in
a plane and its aligned direction. The position and angle are
controlled while its DC-link voltage is also regulated. The
property of the system, in which a mover can receive power
and actuate itself, enables the mover to operate without any
concern about a physical restriction in the working space; a
small bio-robot may solve the in-body problem or a fish-
like robot may swim in the water without any wire.
For the operation, one stator controls a current reference
composed of an AC current and a DC current, and the other
stator controls an AC current where two AC currents have
* Research was supported by the Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial
Technology funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy
(10052980).
* Research was supported by the Brain Korea 21 Plus Project in 2018.
different frequencies. The magnitudes of the stator currents
are kept constant all the time. The mover finds out the phase
and amplitude of the induced voltage on its coils, and using
the information, it synthesizes currents of its d- and q-axis
coils for actuation and power-receiving. Each mover coil is
controlled with corresponding H-bridge inverter where a
DC-link is shared. Since the mover can operate alone in the
steady magnetic field, the stator has no control burden at all.
II. MAGNETICS PRINCIPLES AND SYSTEM DESIGN
Fig. 1 shows the final form of the proposed system; two
stator coils are put orthogonally and generate a steady
magnetic field at the central control area, then a mover also
with two orthogonal coils actuates itself with wirelessly
transferred power. In the system, the mover can move on
the xy-plane and rotate along the z-axis. Following
sections explain the basic principles in the system and
generation of current references for obtaining three DOFs
will be described.
A. Magnetic Field Formed by Stator Coil
Before proposing an actuation method, the magnetic field
distribution in the control region should be investigated.
Fig. 2(a) shows an example axis-symmetric FEM
simulation result of y-axis stator excitation and Fig. 2(b) is
the normal magnetic field passing through the black solid
lines around the center. It can be seen that the normal
magnetic field intensity is almost constant according to x.
Actually, the value of the magnetic field magnitude had a
similar value obtained by the following theoretical
expression which is the function of distance, y, stator coil
radius, 𝑟 , number of stator coil turns, 𝑛 , and stator coil
current is. 1
y-axis q-axis d-axis
stator coil mover coil mover coil x-axis
stator coil
Fig. 1. Size and position relationship of stator coils and mover in the
proposed system. (Mover can move and rotate.)

978-1-5386-6334-9/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 214

 40 mm [T] By along x
0.012
0.010
y=20
y=10 0.008
y=0 0.006
y=-10
0.004
40 mm
y=-20
0.002
0.000
0 5 10 15 20
10 A, 100 turn y=-20 y=-10 y=0 y=10 y=20 [mm]
x=0 x=20
(a) (b) (c)

Fig. 2. (a) FEM simulation result and (b) its legend. (c) Normal magnetic field passing through black solid lines from y=-20 to y=20 in (a).

y-axis torque expressed as 𝑭 = (𝑴 ∙ 𝜵)𝑩 and 𝑻 = 𝑴 × 𝑩 . If a

∗
𝐼𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑛 mover can find out the magnetic field generated by a stator,
,𝑑
the mover can actuate itself by changing its magnetic
θr ∗
𝐼𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑔 moment; the mover can decide its magnetic moment with
∗ 𝑛
𝐼𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑛 ,𝑞 two currents flowing on its orthogonal (d- and q- axis)
coils. When the mover is aligned to 𝜃 (when it is observed
DC stator flux x-axis from the stationary frame), the magnetic moment of the
mover is written as follow with rotational transformation.
𝑀 𝑀
𝑴= 𝑀 = 𝑅(−𝜃 ) 𝑀 (2)

So, to be applied with desired force and torque, the mover

Fig. 3. Top view of alignment reference generation.
𝐵 (𝑦) = / (1)
This infers that an induced voltage on a coil in the control
region is decided by the distance from the stator coil.
Tangential magnetic field intensity has much smaller value,
so it is not utilized for actuation or power transfer or
actuation. In other words, x-axis stator would generate
only an x-axis magnetic field in the control region that is
in phase with the x-axis stator current, and same for the y-
axis stator.
B. Actuation Method (Force and Torque Control)
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do not revise any of the current designations.
In a magnetic field, B, a magnetized object (the mover)
with magnetic moment M comes to be applied force and
should know M, which is obtained with 𝜃 . In this paper,
the control method for a mover to decide 𝜃 is proposed
rather than a method of finding out 𝜃 . For enabling the
mover to decide its angle, a DC field is generated by one
of the stator coils; in this paper, x-axis stator coil generates
it. An object with magnetic moment tends to be aligned
along the magnetic field around it. So, to head along the
desired angle, 𝜃 , the mover generates DC current
references as follow; see Fig. 3. Here, the alignment
current, 𝐼 ∗ , has a fixed magnitude.
𝐼∗ , = 𝐼∗ cos𝜃
(3)
𝐼∗ , = −𝐼 ∗ sin𝜃
As the DC magnetic field generated by the stator has a
smaller value as the mover gets far from the x-axis stator,
the induced force and torque applied to the mover varies
according to the position of the mover. So, 𝐼 ∗ should
be decided with consideration of whole the operating area
of the mover.
To apply force on the mover, AC currents are used.
Placed in the magnetic field with gradient, whose whole
value fluctuates with the stator-side frequency, the mover
can decide the force applied to it by synthesizing its
magnetic moment in phase with the field. (The reason is
explained later, by (6)-(8).)
If the AC current of x-axis stator is expressed as
𝐼 sin𝜙 , mover side x-axis-actuation current references
are written as follow where the magnitude reference, 𝐼 ∗ , ,
is decided by a PID position controller.

215
 𝑝𝑥∗ PID ∗
𝐼𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑔𝑛
𝑉𝑑𝑐 PI
∗
𝐼𝑝𝑐 Rd +sLd 𝑉𝑝𝑐 ,𝑑
𝑝𝑥 ,𝑥
∗
∗
𝐼𝑣𝑐 Rd +sLd 𝑉𝑣𝑐,𝑑
∗ 𝑉𝑑𝑐
sin 𝜙𝑥 𝐼𝑝𝑐 ,𝑑 ∗
cos 𝜙𝑥 𝐼𝑣𝑐,𝑑
R(-θr* )
R(-θr* )
sin 𝜙𝑦 ∗
𝐼𝑝𝑐 ,𝑞 ∗
0 𝐼𝑣𝑐 ,𝑞
𝑝𝑦 ∗
𝐼𝑝𝑐 ,𝑦 Rq +sLq 𝑉𝑝𝑐 ,𝑞
Rq +sLq 𝑉𝑣𝑐,𝑞
𝑝𝑦∗ PID

(a) (b)

Fig. 4. (a) Position and angle controller and (b) voltage controller on the mover side in the proposed system.

𝐼 ∗ , , = 𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 cos𝜃 phase difference. Such operation makes the current

𝐼 ∗ , , = −𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 sin𝜃
The y-axis-actuation current references are written
similarly to (4), and summed references are obtained as
follow.
𝐼 ∗ , = 𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 cos𝜃 + 𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 sin𝜃
𝐼 ∗ , = −𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 sin𝜃 + 𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 cos𝜃
The translational actuation along x- and y-axis can be done
simultaneously since AC currents of x- and y-axis stators
have different frequencies. For the same reason, the
alignment can be done at the same time. Fig. 4(a) shows a
block diagram of the position and angle controller which
generates current references of (3) and (5).
When the phase of x-axis current is 𝜙 , the magnetic
field formed along x-axis is expressed as 𝐵 (𝑝 ) sin 𝜙
where the magnitude, 𝐵 , is obtained as (1). Then, the
force applied to the mover is written as
( )
𝐹 =𝑀
With current references of (4), the mover synthesizes only
x-axis magnetic moment which is in phase with the AC
current on the x-axis stator. Then, (6) and its average value
are rewritten as follow where Kx is the actuation coefficient
along x-axis when the mover is at px.
(4) reference for power-receiving be in phase with the induced
voltage along the x-axis, which leads to the minimized
copper loss of the system. (The induced voltage leads the
x-axis stator current by 90°.) The y-axis current also can
be used for power-receiving, but to reduce the complexity
of the control scheme, only the x-axis is used for power
(5) transfer.
If AC current of x-axis stator is expressed as 𝐼 sin𝜙 ,
mover side power-receiving current references are as
follow where the magnitude reference, 𝐼 ∗ , is decided by a
voltage controller.
𝐼 ∗ , = 𝐼 ∗ cos𝜙 cos𝜃
(9)
𝐼 ∗ , = −𝐼 ∗ cos𝜙 sin𝜃
Fig. 4(b) shows the block diagram of voltage controller
expressed as (9).
When the magnetic field along x-axis is 𝐵 (𝑝 ) sin 𝜙 , the
voltage induced on the mover side can be written as
(6) 𝑉 , (𝑝 ) cos 𝜙 . Then, the transferred power and its
average value are expressed with a power-transfer
coefficient, 𝐾 , as
𝑃 = 𝐾 (𝑝 )𝐼 cos 𝜙 (10)
𝑃 = 𝐾 (𝑝 )𝐼 (11)

𝐹 (𝑡) = 𝐾 (𝑝 )𝐼 , sin 𝜙 (7) D. Final Current Reference

𝐹 (𝑡) = 𝐾 (𝑝 )𝐼 , (8)
Actuation equations along the y-axis are written similarly
to (7) and (8). The actuation coefficients, 𝐾 and 𝐾 , can
be calculated during the operation using the estimated
position and FEM simulation result. The actuation
coefficients divides the output of the PID position
controllers.
C. Active Receiving Power Control
For wireless power transfer, an AC magnetic field is
required, and it is already formed for translational
actuation. However, for power transfer, the mover
synthesizes its magnetic moment along the x-axis with 90°
Combining the current references, overall d- and q-axis
current references for alignment, translational actuation,
and power receiving are written as follow.
𝐼 ∗ = 𝐼 ∗ cos𝜃 + 𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 cos𝜃
(12)
+𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 sin𝜃 + 𝐼 ∗ , cos𝜙 cos𝜃
𝐼 ∗ = −𝐼 ∗ sin𝜃 − 𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 sin𝜃
(13)
+𝐼 ∗ , sin𝜙 cos𝜃 − 𝐼 ∗ , cos𝜙 sin𝜃
Note that there would be force and power ripple in the
system since both terms are expressed as sinusoidal
functions. If the frequency of an AC current gets higher
keeping the magnitude constant, the effect of the power,
force and torque ripple gets smaller. Together, the voltage

216
 𝑉𝑐𝑐 ,𝑑
∗ 𝑉𝑣𝑐,𝑑
𝐼𝑣𝑐 ,𝑑 𝑉𝑖𝑛𝑑 ,𝑥𝑑
BPF(fx) 𝑉𝑖𝑛𝑑 ,𝑥
R(θr ) PLL 𝜙𝑥
𝐼𝑑 PR
∗ BPF(fy)
𝐼𝑝𝑐 ,𝑑 𝑉𝑝𝑐 ,𝑑 𝑝𝑥
𝑉𝑖𝑛𝑑 ,𝑦𝑑 𝑉𝑖𝑛𝑑 ,𝑥𝑞 Vind
Table
∗
𝐼𝑣𝑐 𝑉𝑝𝑐 ,𝑞 𝑝𝑦
,𝑞 BPF(fx)
𝐼𝑞 PR
R(θr ) PLL 𝜙𝑦
∗ BPF(fy) 𝑉𝑖𝑛𝑑 ,𝑦
𝐼𝑝𝑐 ,𝑞 𝑉𝑖𝑛𝑑 ,𝑦𝑞
𝑉𝑣𝑐 ,𝑞
𝑉𝑐𝑐 ,𝑞

Fig. 5. Current controller and status estimator of the proposed system.

III. STATUS ESTIMATION AND CONTROL METHOD

To actuate itself, the mover should know the phases of
the currents flowing on stator coils and its position. Fig. 5
shows the current controller and status estimator. As
aforementioned with Fig. 2, the mover can estimate its x-
(a)
position using the voltage induced along the x-axis based
on (1), and y-position can be found similarly. By using the
known inductance and resistance information, the mover
can calculate the voltage required for synthesizing currents,
(12) and (13), as shown in Fig. 4. Then by subtracting the
voltages from the voltage reference of PR current controller,
the voltages induced on d- and q-axis mover-side coils can
be found; these induced voltages are composed of two
components related to x- and y-axis stator-side AC currents.
Band-pass filters of x- and y- axis frequencies, 𝑓 and 𝑓 ,
(b) can help finding the magnitudes of induced voltages along
x- and y-axis. Then, the FEM result, ‘Vind table’ in Fig. 5,
is used for position estimation. In Fig. 5, the dotted parts
(q-axis bandpass filters) can be removed since the mover
knows its aligned direction so that it can find out induced
voltages along x- and y-axis only with q-axis bandpass
filters. However, when the mover is aligned along x- or y-
axis, the estimated induced voltage may have large error,
so, it is better to utilize values from both d- and q-axis filters.

(c)
Fig. 6. PLECS blocks used in the simulation. (a) Stator and control
area blocks. (b) Subsystem of ‘Robot’ block. (c) Subsystem of ‘SW circuit’
block.
induced on the mover gets higher so that more power can
be transferred. However, there comes to be a limitation in
increasing the frequency since higher DC-link voltages are
required on both stator and mover side. If actuation and
power-transfer cannot be performed together, the
mechanical design of the system should be modified. For
instance, increasing the number of coil-turns on the side in
which the voltage has margin, or reducing the width of the
control region can be a solution.
IV. SIMULATION
A simulation was performed to verify the operation of
the proposed system using PLECS. Fig. 6 shows the block
models used in the simulation. In Fig. 6(a), the top level
block models, based on the FEM result, magnetic fields
formed at the mover position is calculated under the
assumption that the stator currents followed the references
identically. In Fig. 6(b), at first, the voltages induced on d-
and q-axis coils are obtained from differentiating fluxes
according to time using the aligned direction of the mover.
In physical plant subsystem, the spatial differentiations of
magnetic fluxes at the mover position are calculated for
obtaining applied force based on (1). Together, the mass
and angular momentum of the mover are considered with
translational and rotational drags. Using DSP, a digital
control was performed, and current references are
generated in 50 kHz. In the real implemented system, the

217
 TABLE I. PARAMETERS USED IN SIMULATION. Vind,d id
Parameters Value
[V] [A]
Stator coil radius (rx=ry) 5 cm
x-axis coil frequency, fx 5 kHz
y-axis coil frequency, fy 4 kHz Vind,q iq
Magnitude of x-axis stator coil DC current 10 A [V] [A]
Magnitude of stator coil AC currents 50 A
Number of turns of stator coil (nx=ny) 60 turn
Mover coil radius (rd=rq) 2 cm [s] [s]
(a) (b)
Inductance of mover coil (Ld=Lq) 30 uH
Resistance of the mover coil (Rd=Rq) 0.1 Ω
[m]
Capacitance of DC-link of mover 66 uF x VDC
Sensing and switching frequency of mover 50 kHz
Distance between center and stators 5 cm [V]
[m]
Number of turns of mover coil (nd=nq) 39 turn y
Mass of the mover 100 g
Translational drag coefficient 10 N/(m/s) [rad] θr
Rotational drag coefficient 10 N m s
Power consumed on mover 10 W [s] [s]
(c) (d)

Fig. 8. Simulation results according to time. (a) Induced voltages and

x-axis stator (b) currents on d- and q-axis coils. (c) Position and angle of the mover.
coil at (d) DC-link voltage of mover.
t=5s
(-5cm, 0)

t=3.75s t=0s t=1.25s
t=2.5s
r=10mm
y-axis stator
coil at
(0, -5cm)
Fig. 7. Top-view of position and angle references used in the
simulation. The position and direction of the magnet mean position and
angle references. All references are given to the mover with 0.05 s delay
for voltage regulation.
DSP control board would be attached on or put inside of
the mover. As shown in Fig. 6(c), in SW circuit subsystem,
d- and q- axis currents are controlled with shared DC-link.
Note that position and angle values of the mover are not
given to DSP, but it is rather known by the proposed status
estimator of Fig. 5. Parameters used in the simulation are
listed in Table I.
The position and alignment references according to time
are given as Fig. 7. In the given command, the mover keeps
rotating while moving along linear and circular paths. The
DC-link voltage reference is set to 40 V.
Fig. 8 shows the simulation results. It can be seen that
the mover followed the given position and angle
commands while keeping its DC-link voltage to a
reference value. Looking into Fig. 8(a), it can be found that
the voltage induced on its d- and q-axis coils get smaller
as the mover gets far the stator. If the mover is not aligned
along the x- or y-axis, the x-axis stator current induces
voltages on both d- and q-axis coils, and so does the y-axis
stator current. Since the frequency of the x- and y-axis
currents are different, the peak-to-peak value of the
induced voltage on the d-axis or q-axis coil is the sum of
the magnitudes of the voltages induced on it by the x- and
y-axis fields. Voltage ripple caused by sinusoidal power
receiving is observed in Fig. 8(d), but the ripple in position
and angle are decreased as in Fig. 8(c) thanks to the drags
in the physical.
Fig. 9(a) shows the DC-link voltage of the starting
moment. After regulating its DC-link voltage (from 0 to
0.05 s), the mover starts controlling its position and angle
(from 0.05 s). While only the DC-link voltage is controlled,
the magnitude of the ripple voltage is about 0.1 V, but after
starting position and angle control, the ripple gets larger to
about 1 V. This means that the capacitor of the mover
should be chosen based on this simulation result rather
than the power ripple expressed in (12). However, since
the ripple power made between voltage and current of
different frequencies has zero average value, the proposed
voltage controller is still applicable.
Fig. 10 shows low-pass filtered mover-side currents; the
current ripples of 50 kHz due to switching are decreased.
The large sine waves of 0.2 Hz are components for mover
alignment. On these currents, 5 kHz and 4 kHz currents are
added as (10) and (11) for position and receiving-power
control. Fig. 10(b) is the zoomed view around 2.55 s. In
the figure, it can be seen that id is almost composed of 5
kHz component, and iq is composed of 4 kHz since the

218
 id
VDC [A] [A]

id
[V]
iq
[A] [A]

iq
2.5510
[s] [s]
[s] (a) (b)

Fig. 9. Simulation result of DC-link voltage of mover at starting Fig. 10. Low-pass filtered currents on mover side (d- and q- axis) coils.
moment. id and iq (a) through the whole simulation and (b) currents around 2.55 s.

[2] A. J. Petruska and B. J. Nelson, “Minimum Bounds on the

mover is aligned to the x-axis. 4 kHz while 1 kHz beat Number of Electromagnets Required for Remote Magnetic
waves are observed in both sides. It seems the robot did Manipulation,” IEEE Trans. Robot., vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 714–722,
not completely head to the x-axis at the time, and force Jun. 2015.
along y-axis was also required. [3] G. Go et al., “Electromagnetic Navigation System Using Simple
Coil Structure (4 Coils) for 3-D Locomotive Microrobot,” IEEE
Trans. Magn., vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 1–7, Apr. 2015.
V. SCALABILITY OF PROPOSED SYSTEM [4] S. Martel, “Advantages and limitations of the various magnetic
manipulation methods of untethered agents in the human body,”
The overall space of the simulation was set as a 5-cm in 2014 IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced
square, and the mover could move in 1-cm-radius circle Intelligent Mechatronics, 2014, pp. 13–18.
around the center point. When the distance between stators [5] A. W. Jenkins and H. M. Parker, “Electromagnetic Support
and mover is enlarged with a scale k, with no change in Arrangement with Three‐Dimensional Control. I. Theoretical,” J.
Appl. Phys., vol. 30, no. 4, pp. S238–S239, Apr. 1959.
other parameters, the magnetic field at the center point is [6] J. Lee and J. I. Ha, “Wirelessly Powered Coil-Type Robot with
decreased to about 1/𝑘 . If radiuses of stator coils and 1D Self-Actuation Capability,” in 2017 IEEE Energy Conversion
mover coils are enlarged with the same scale, k, the flux Congress and Exposition (ECCE), 2017, pp. 2382–2388.
passing through the mover side coil become 1/k of the
original system. If the limits of currents flowing on the
stator and mover coils are also enlarged by k, then k times
of power can be delivered.
By the way, since the gradient of the magnetic field
distribution is inversely proportional to the square of the
distance, the mover can actuate itself with the same force
if all parameters of the system are scaled with the same
scale. As the mover would have higher size, for keeping
the position controllability of the mover, the current limits
of the coils and inverters should be larger.

VI. CONCLUSION
The proposed 2D translational and 1D rotational self-
actuation system was verified with a simulation. In the
magnetic field composed of DC field and 2 AC fields, the
mover could decide its aligned direction and could find the
distance from each stator coil. Using two AC currents of
different frequencies, decoupled control of position, angle
and power-receiving was possible. The simultaneous
operation of state estimator and the controllers (for
position, angle, and phases of AC currents) was verified.

REFERENCES
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Sengul, and B. J. Nelson, “OctoMag: An Electromagnetic System
for 5-DOF Wireless Micromanipulation,” IEEE Trans. Robot.,
vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 1006–1017, Dec. 2010.

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