Assembly automation on the nanoscale

This paper describes the major challenges and approaches towards the automation of serial assembly processes on the nanoscale. It is motivated by the fact, that up to now only very few and only simple assembly processes have been successfully automated on that scale. Three major issues have been identified in this working environment: Localization of the nanoscale parts on multiple scales, contact and depth detection between tools and parts and the joining and separation on this small scale. For each problem area, different approaches will be presented and compared with each other. (C) 2011 CIRP.