Vision feedback driven automated assembly of photopolymerized structures by parallel optical trapping and manipulation

We demonstrate how optical trapping and manipulation can be used to assemble microstructures. The microstructures we show being automatically recognized and manipulated are produced using the two-photon polymerization (2PP) technique with submicron resolution. In this work, we show identical shape-complementary puzzle pieces being manipulated in a fluidic environment forming space-filling tessellations. By implementation of image analysis to detect the puzzle pieces, we developed a system capable of assembling a puzzle with no user interaction required. This allows for automatic gathering of sparsely scattered objects by optical trapping when combined with a computer controlled motorized sample stage.