Automated robot-based separation and palletizing of microcomponents

Separation and palletizing of microparts is a prerequisite for microhandling and microassembly, especially for components such as microspheres that cannot be efficiently produced and transported in a well-ordered form. Two mi-crorobots equipped with a microgripper and a sharp tungsten tip, respectively, can be effectively utilized to solve this task cooperatively. Based on a powerful visual feedback architecture, the automated palletizing of two different microspheres initially lying in an unordered agglomerated structure is demonstrated. The achieved sorting throughput is in the range of one sphere per second while maintaining a placement accuracy of 3μm.