Trev Talks

I had the honor of meeting with Professor Kenn Oldham, a mechanical engineering professor who works in the Vibrations and Acoustics Laboratory: Microsystems at the University of Michigan. During this meeting he shared some of his story and about work in piezo electro micro actuators. 

After getting his undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University and Phd from UC Berkeley, Professor Oldham applied and got his faculty position at the University of Michigan. However, at the same time, he also received a postdoctoral offer in the U.S. Army research laboratory. Looking for more experience, Professor Oldham deferred his faculty position for a year and got involved with work on piezoelectric materials at the U.S Army. Piezoelectric materials respond to a mechanical stress to produce an electrical response and react to an electrical field producing a physical response. One of his applications for this technology in the U.S. army was using these piezoelectric actuators to build micro robots. Most micro robots that exist are manipulated through external fields. The army was specifically interested in autonomousness of these robots. Professor Oldham explained that this was very difficult to do as the battery and processing units of the robots reduced the amount of payload that could be carried, limiting what the robots could do. Regardless, Professor Oldham and his colleagues still worked on these robots researching how to control them and navigate complex terrains.

While fun, the applications of these robots are fairly restricted due to their size. Most of Professor Oldham’s work is now applying his expertise in manipulators and actuators to biomedical research. One of his bigger projects is using these actuators to manipulate micro-mirrors for laser scanning in endoscopy tools. He also works with colleges that specialize in acoustical application that use acoustic transducers