Laser measuring system for a flexible microrobot-based micromanipulation station

There is an increasing interest in performing assembly of microsystems by flexible microrobots. A microrobot-based microassembly desktop station has been developed at the University of Karlsruhe. In this paper, new implementation results of a computer vision based automatic control system of a mobile microrobot with an integrated flexible manipulator are discussed. The operations of the robot manipulator take place under a microscope equipped with a CCD-camera. A major drawback of this system is its lack of depth information. For this reason, the sensor system has been enhanced by a line laser, using laser triangulation. The set-up of the modified sensor system is described. The measuring principle is based on a method called sheet of light triangulation, a variation of standard triangulation. This approach is described in detail, and its advantages and limitations are discussed