A flexible microrobotic platform for handling microscale specimens of fibrous materials for microscopic studies

One of the most challenging issues faced in handling specimens for microscopy, is avoiding artefacts and structural changes in the samples caused by human errors. In addition, specimen handling is a laborious and time‐consuming task and requires skilful and experienced personnel. This paper introduces a flexible microrobotic platform for the handling of microscale specimens of fibrous materials for various microscopic studies such as scanning electron microscopy and nanotomography. The platform is capable of handling various fibres with diameters ranging from 10 to 1000 μm and lengths of 100 μm–15 mm, and mounting them on different types of specimen holders without damaging them. This tele‐operated microrobotic platform minimizes human interaction with the samples, which is one of the main sources contributory to introducing artefacts into the specimens. The platform also grants a higher throughput and an improved success rate of specimen handling, when compared to the manual processes. The operator does not need extensive experience of microscale manipulation and only a short training period is sufficient to operate the platform. The requirement of easy configurability for various samples and sample holders is typical in the research and development of materials in this field. Therefore, one of the main criteria for the design of the microrobotic platform was the ability to adapt the platform to different specimen handling methods required for microscopic studies. To demonstrate this, three experiments are carried out using the microrobotic platform. In the first experiment, individual paper fibres are mounted successfully on scanning electron microscopy specimen holders for the in situ scanning electron microscopy diagonal compression test of paper fibres. The performance of the microrobotic platform is compared with a skilled laboratory worker performing the same experiment. In the second experiment, a strand of human hair and an individual paper fibre bond are mounted on a specimen holder for nanotomography studies. In the third experiment, individual paper fibre bonds with controlled crossing and vertical angles are made using the microrobotic platform. If an industrial application requires less flexibility but a higher speed when handling one type of sample to a specific holder, then the platform can be automated in the future.

[1]  Pasi Kallio,et al.  Capillary Pressure Microinjection of Living Adherent Cells: Challenges in Automation , 2006 .

[2]  Sergej Fatikow,et al.  Nanorobotic manipulation setup for pick-and-place handling and nondestructive characterization of carbon nanotubes , 2007, 2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[3]  Wolfgang Bauer,et al.  A novel method for the determination of bonded area of individual fiber-fiber bonds , 2009 .

[4]  Lining Sun,et al.  Micromanipulation robot for automatic fiber alignment , 2005, IEEE International Conference Mechatronics and Automation, 2005.

[5]  Sounkalo Dembélé,et al.  Robotic micromanipulation for microassembly: modelling by sequencial function chart and achievement by multiple scale visual servoings , 2009 .

[6]  T. Arai,et al.  Dexterous micromanipulation supporting cell and tissue engineering , 2005, IEEE International Symposium on Micro-NanoMechatronics and Human Science, 2005.

[7]  Bradley J. Nelson,et al.  Investigating protein structure with a microrobotic system , 2004, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2004. Proceedings. ICRA '04. 2004.

[8]  Pasi Kallio,et al.  Microrobotic platform for making, manipulating and breaking individual paper fiber bonds , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM).

[9]  Fumihito Arai,et al.  Minimally invasive micromanipulation of microbe by laser trapped micro tools , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[10]  Sergej Fatikow,et al.  A carbon nanofibre scanning probe assembled using an electrothermal microgripper , 2007 .

[11]  Bradley J. Nelson,et al.  Micropositioning of a weakly calibrated microassembly system using coarse-to-fine visual servoing strategies , 2000 .

[12]  Peter K. Allen,et al.  Visually-guided protein crystal manipulation using micromachined silicon tools , 2004, 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37566).

[13]  Salvador Pané,et al.  Manufacturing of a Hybrid Acoustic Transmitter Using an Advanced Microassembly System , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.

[14]  Wenjie Chen,et al.  Design of a flexure-based gripper used in optical fiber handling , 2004, RAM.

[15]  I. Lundström,et al.  Microrobots for micrometer-size objects in aqueous media: potential tools for single-cell manipulation. , 2000, Science.

[16]  Gareth J. Monkman,et al.  Robot Grippers for Use With Fibrous Materials , 1995, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[17]  Christoph Hürzeler,et al.  A Microassembly System for the Flexible Assembly of Hybrid Robotic Mems Devices , 2009 .

[18]  Young-Ho Kim,et al.  An integrated bio cell processor for single embryo cell manipulation , 2004, 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37566).

[19]  Frank Winnefeld,et al.  In situ nanomanipulators as a tool to separate individual tobermorite crystals for AFM studies. , 2007, Ultramicroscopy.

[20]  Kun Lian,et al.  New fabrication techniques of SU-8 fiber holder with cantilever-type elastic microclips by inclined UV lithography in water using single Mylar mask , 2009 .