A robot system for automated handling in micro-world

Abstract

Nanotechnology is a key issue in today's and tomorrow's development of advanced products. Soon new tools will be needed to automatically handle and assemble micro-sized objects with nanometer precision, or simply to give human beings the capability of operating in these tiny dimensions. In view of the emerging applications in this field, the Swiss Federal Institute a Technology, Zurich (ETHZ) decided to focus on an interdisciplinary project with the theme "Nanorobotics", i.e. automated handling of microparts with nanometer resolution. After a short description of the goals and the approach taken in this project this paper focuses on some important aspects of the design of high precision robots. Two new 3 DOF planar robots are presented. Both of them have an unlimited range of motion while having a resolution down to 10 nm. They have been controlled using vision feedback under a light microscope and have shown very promising results.