22 accepted papers
This letter presents a method to determine and control the center of rotation of a parallel micro-robotic platform used as a sample holder for an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). The AFM is operating inside a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) for correlative AFM in SEM imaging. The objective is to sp
This paper presents a functionality that has been developed for the home-made AFM-in-SEM robotic system at the ISIR laboratory. The method allows extending the range of an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and dealing with drift issues by fusing multiple individually AFM topography patches. The merging…
This article proposes a method for the correction of angular deviations caused during the fixing process of samples prepared for Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The correction is done using the angular control of a 6-DOF PPPS parallel platform were the sample is placed, while the AFM scan is performe…
The spherical joint is an effective solution to design parallel micro-robotic systems with rotation capabilities in the three-dimensional space. This type of joint has however some non-linear characteristics, such as the clearance, which affect the positioning accuracy in micro-robotic tasks. The st…
Active force sensors are key instruments to get around the tradeoff between the sensitivity and the measurement range of conventional passive force sensors. Thanks to their quasi-infinite stiffness in closed loop, active sensors can be applied for force measurements on samples with a wide range of s…
Micro-teleoperated interaction with biological cells is of special interest. The low fidelity of previous systems aimed at such small scale tasks prompted the design of a novel manual bilateral cell injection system. This systems employed the coupling of a null-displacement active force sensor with
Micromanipulation is challenging due to the specific physical effects governing the microworld. Interactive approaches using only visual feedback are limited to the 2D image of the microscope, and have forcibly lower bandwidth. Recently, haptic feedback teleoperation systems have been developed to t…
In this paper, we introduce novel miniature swimmers with multiple rigid tails based on spherical helices. The tail distribution of these prototypes enhances its swimming features as well as allowing to carry objects with it. The proposed swimmers are actuated by a rotating magnetic field, generatin…
Collaborative robotics allows merging the best capabilities of humans and robots to perform complex tasks. This allows the user to interact with remote and directly inaccessible environments such as the micro-scale world. This interaction is made possible by the bidirectional exchange of information…
This paper proposes a new control-oriented model to compute the magnetic field created by a coil. A major challenge for untethered microscale mobile robotics is the control of objects for precise and fast displacements. In this work, we propose to use an alternative implementation of a model based o…
Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) is an ideal observation tool for small scales robotics. It has the potential to achieve automated nano-robotic tasks such as nano-handling and nano-assembly. Path following control of nano-robot end effectors using SEM vision feedback is a key for an intuitive prog…
Flexible and helical magnetic microswimmers have been well reviewed in the literature because they could be exploited for envisaged applications such as targeted drug delivery, material removal, and micromanipulation. In this article, scaled-up versions of those robots are introduced to study in det…
Optical robots are microscale structures actuated using laser trapping techniques. However, the lack of robust and real-time three-dimensional (3-D) actuation techniques reduces most applications to planar space. We present here a new approach to generate and control several optical traps synchronou
Micro-assembly is a challenging issue for automation due to particularities of micro-world physics and limitations on sensors. Consequently, most applications are human-operated often with basic joystick-like interfaces. Beside being nonintuitive, these solutions do not provide their users with a me…
Previously, we developed a 3D path following algorithm to improve the microrobot performances to overcome the modeling errors and environmental disturbances in order to perform real tasks, tested experimentally in a scaled-up helical microswimmer. In this paper, we show that adapting the propulsion…
Optical Tweezers are considered one of the most suitable techniques for biological tasks, however the lack of automation make this technology less accessible. We present here a new 3D force sensing method with high bandwidth (up to 10Khz) which can allow implementing complex robotic approaches. Prop…
Nano-robotic systems based on Piezoelectric StickSlip (PSS) actuators have become increasingly popular in research and industry for semi-automated and automated tasks at small scales. For an efficient use of PSS actuators, a series of research have been fulfilled on design process, dynamic modeling,…
This paper addresses the problem of 3D path following of magnetic helical microswimmers in closed-loop. An error kinematic model in a local frame with sideslip and attack angles is used to express the motion of the helical microswimmer. A new derivation of the chained form with three inputs and five
Visual tracking and estimation of the 3D posture of a micro/nano-object is a key issue in the development of automated manipulation tasks using the visual feedback. The 3D posture of the micro-object is estimated based on a template matching algorithm. Nevertheless, a key challenge for visual tracki…
In order to define trajectory-tracking strategies for nano-robotic systems using piezoelectric stick-slip actuators, the dynamics of the elementary actuator must be studied and well modeled. The modeling of this class of actuators is complex because several nonlinear parameters are involved. In this…
Direct photometric visual servoing uses only the pure image information as a visual feature, instead of using classic geometric features such as points or lines. It was demonstrated efficiently in 6 degrees of freedom (DoF) positioning. However, in micro-scale, using only image intensity as a visual…
This paper addresses modeling issues for a class of nano-robotic systems using piezoelectric stick-slip actuators. The work focuses on the friction force modeling to describe the dynamics of a stick-slip actuator in a wide operating range needed in nano-robotics. Based on the theory of the single st…