Force and vision feedback for robotic manipulation of the microworld

Several emerging research areas related to microscale phenomenon, such as micromechatronics and biological cell manipulation, have the potential to significantly impact our society. Current manufacturing techniques, however, are incapable of automatically handling objects at these scales. The lack of manufacturing techniques for manipulating micron sized objects presents a technology barrier to the eventual commercial success of these fields. To overcome this technology barrier, new strategies in robotic control and robotic micromanipulation must be developed. These strategies which will enable the development of automatic micropart handling capabilities must address the following two issues: (1) extreme high relative positioning accuracy must be achieved, and (2) the vastly different microphysics that govern part interactions at micron scales must be compensated. In this paper, we present our work in visually servoed micropositioning and force sensor development for characterizing the mechanics of micromanipulation and controlling microforces throughout microassembly tasks.