Remotely controllable mobile microrobots acting as nano positioners and intelligent tweezers in scanning electron microscopes (SEMs)

In the scanning electron microscope, many studies require micromanipulation tools that can be flexibly and comfortably used for the handling and positioning of objects ranging from a few millimeters down to fractions of microns. In the paper, some aspects of the control of small mobile microrobots by teleoperation are addressed facing the special behavior of their piezoelectric actuators and the challenge of handling tasks in ranges of very different orders of magnitude (100 nm-100 mm). In order to give the teleoperated tweezers a kind of low-level "intelligence", a control loop using the SEM as a sensor system is being developed. In different open-loop handling experiments, the employed 6D-mouse proves satisfactory as an intuitive user interface.