Keith Houston, Arne Sieber, Clemens Eder, Orazio Vittorio, Arianna Menciassi, and Paolo Dario
Haptic, teleoperation, micro-manipulation, micro-gripper, force feedback
In this paper a modular telemanipulation station for micro-manipulation processes is presented. The master device consists of a MICROSCRIBETM 3D digitizer and a novel haptic tweezers device which enables the user to make grasping and probing inputs while at the same time feeding back the grasping force to the user thus allowing the user to feel the grasping force at the fingertips. The slave is a micro-manipulator which is free to move in three degrees of freedom (DOF), controlled by the movements of the haptic master device. On this slave micro-manipulator many types of sensorized micro-tools can be mounted such as three DOF force sensors and force sensorized microgrippers. The modularity of the system allows different types of micro-tools to be mounted and connected to the system electronics with ease, while the visual user interface (developed with National Instruments LABVIEWTM) allows the user to modify or change the sensorized tools and also modify user variables in real-time. The haptic input device design, micro-tool specifications and the electronic control software/hardware will be presented, and preliminary results of micro-manipulation of micro-particles and biological cells as well as force control experiments with the haptic system will be detailed.
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