CameraMan - Robot Cell with Flexible Vision Feedback for Automated Nanohandling inside SEMs

This paper presents a concept for a nanohandling robot cell with flexible visual feedback that can work inside an SEM´s vacuum chamber and enable fully automated nanohandling and assembly. Therefore, rail-based robots position miniature video microscopes to observe the process from different angles and with different magnifications. Image processing techniques can be used to recognize and track objects as well as three dimensional information can be obtained by stereo vision and by the microscope´s focus. The mechanical feasibility and advantages of the CameraMan concept are analyzed with a prototypic implementation of a nanohandling robot cell. To control this highly non-linear system a self-learning controller is used, challenges for cooperatively controlling the multi-robot system are outlined and high-level automation is discussed.