Modular Robotic Platform for Silicon Micromechanical Assembly

As no reliable methods is available to manipulate component whose typical size is up to 100 μm, current industrial assembled products contained only components down to this physical limit. In that scale, micro-assembly requires specific handling strategies to overcome adhesion and high precision robots. This paper deals with an original robotic system able to perform reliable micro-assembly of silicon microobjects whose sizes are tens of micrometers. Original hybrid handling strategies between gripping and adhesion handling are proposed. An experimental robotic structure composed of micropositionning stages, videomicroscopes, piezogripper, and silicon end-effectors is presented. A modular control architecture is proposed to easily design and modify the robotic structure. Some experimental teleoperated micromanipulations and micro-assemblies have validated the proposed methods and the reliability of the principles. Future works will be focused on micro-assembly automation.