A versatile vision system for micromanipulation tasks

Semi-autonomous and fully autonomous assembly and manipulation of micro-objects is a complex process. To this purpose, flexible microrobot systems have been designed and developed. These robots are generally required to operate in a wide range of environments to perform tasks such as microassembly, cell manipulation and particle grasping. As part of the MINIMAN project, a flexible microrobot system has been developed which can operate under a light microscope as well as in the chamber of a scanning electron microscope (SEM). This system is highly flexible, reconfigurable and uses a wide range of sensor information (force, tactile and vision) in a closed-loop controlled strategy. The paper presents an overview of the vision system and its architecture for vision-controlled micromanipulation. The different modules of the vision system and the communication interface to the control system are herewith described in detail.