Development of a Piezo-actuated Robot for Cell Injection

In the presented work model and experiments of compliant robots with piezo actuators are carried out. The robot is designed to perform automatic injection of cells in the range of 10-30 μm. A kinematics model of serial-parallel structures is presented. Pseudo rigid body approach is used, where the elastic joints are modelled as revolute joints. Models for tension of parallel structures with elastic joints are developed in order to eliminate backlashes, to diminish hysteresis, and to improve the performance of the piezo-actuators. Two design approaches are proposed. First approach ensures preliminary tensioning by assembly translation along the axes of the driving joints. Second approach ensures preliminary tensioning by assembly deflections of the basic serial chain elastic joints. The design of new 3-degrees of freedom (DOF) piezo actuated micro-manipulators with serial-parallel structure including elastic joints capable of performing cell injection is presented. Numerical experiments are done for tensioning of the manipulator. An estimation of the manipulator mechanical parameters for different approaches is carried out. Manipulator simulations with elastic joints are performed using FEA based function of a CAD system. The real manipulator prototype is experimentally investigated using digital image correlation technique.