Kinematics parameters estimation for an AFM/robot integrated micro-force measurement system

This paper introduces a novel atomic force microscope (AFM) and parallel robot integrated micro-force measurement system whose objective is the measurement of adhesion force between planar micro-objects. This paper is mainly focused on the kinematics parameters estimation between the objects to be measured, the parallel robot and the AFM system in order to position both objects during measurement. A substrate is placed on the end-platform of the parallel robot system, on which three markers are utilized as the reference information to the kinematics parameters estimation. The markers are identified by the AFM scanning in order to identify the kinematics parameters of the whole system. Based on the classic Gauss-Newton algorithm, the position and orientation can be solved. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through the experiments on the prototype of the micro-force measurement system. The parameters estimation methodology outlined is generic and also can be extended to a variety of applications in calibration of micro-robots.