Design of VCM actuator for optical zooming smartphone cameras

The function of optical zooming is really rare in smartphone cameras due to its appearances and dimensions now. The manufactures need to provide a better optical performance and make a new gimmick to attract consumers. As a result, a novel VCM actuator with optical zoom for smartphone cameras is proposed in this paper, it has a simpler structure when compared to stepping motor smartphone cameras. The paper presents a segmented magnetic equivalent circuit method to analyze the magnetic characteristics of proposed VCM actuator and further verified by a commercial finite element model software. Furthermore, the performance of the proposed optical zoom VCM actuator was verified by constructing a laboratory-built prototype, the experimental results shows that the proposed VCM actuator has good positioning accuracy and good dynamic response.