Microrobot-Based Microassembly Station and Its Control Using a Graphical User Interface

Abstract In the fields of biology, microelectronics and microsystem technology many operations are today performed by hand which might also be done by micromanipulation robots. Several prototypes of such robots have already been built and tested, but in the field of control systems and user interfaces of such micromanipulation systems, there is still much work to be done. Different applications demand different levels of control and planning: easyier, single tasks may be performed by teleoperation, while others require a programmed motion sequence or even task planning to accomplish a complex assembly task a with minimum of human interaction. This paper presents a micromanipluation system consisting of a microassembly robot working under a light-optical microscope, a CCD camera and an XY-stage. Then, the software infrastructure for the microrobot control system is presented and the underlying hardware system is described. It also shows a user interface based on this structures, a semi-automated teleoperation system. The user interface presented here uses the live image of the CCD camera to perform either open or closed loop control of the robot's position. All parameters of the microscope and XY-stage can be controlled with dialog windows. The software infrastructure allows also the development of task planning algorithms by providing an intermediate layer to control the robot