Micromanipulation system with stereoscopic imaging

This paper reports the design of a micromanipulation system with stereoscopic imaging for handling and assembly in microtechnology. The system consists of the Kleindiek Micromanipulator MM3A, a mobile stage, a microgripper, an electromagnetic microactuator, a stereoscopic microscope in combination with a CCD camera, 2 additional external CCD cameras and a computer. The microgripper is mounted on the micromanipulator, which has 3 degrees of freedom (two rotational axes, one linear axis), subnanometer resolution and a wide working range (240° in the rotational axes, 12 mm in linear axis). However, the micromanipulator does not possess positional encoders; therefore a feedback of the current position of the manipulator's axes is not available. Hence, the control unit of the manipulator allows only stepwise manual control of the micromanipulator. Due to this fact, this study mainly focused on the development of automated control of the micromanipulator. Visual feedback was chosen to provide position information of the manipulator's axes and a PC based control has been implemented by connecting the control unit to the PC by serial port. Moreover, since the microgripper is electromagnetically driven it is easier to control the displacement of the tips as well as the gripping force by controlling the applied current.