Toward intuitive teleoperation of micro/nano-manipulators with piezoelectric stick-slip actuators

Commercial micro/nano-manipulators, which utilize piezoelectric stick-slip actuators to achieve high precision over a large workspace, are currently controlled by a human operator at the joint level, leading to unintuitive and time-consuming teleoperation. Prior work has considered the use of computer-vision-feedback to close a control loop for improved performance, but computer-vision-feedback is not a viable option for many end users. In this paper, we discuss how open-loop models of the micro/nano-manipulator can be used to achieve desired end-effector movements, and we explain the process of obtaining open-loop models. We propose a rate-control teleoperation method that utilizes the obtained model, and we experimentally quantify the effectiveness of the method using a common commercial manipulator (the Kleindiek MM3A).