Micro-sensors for manipulation and micro-assembly.

International audienceWe are developping microrobots to perform various tasks in the so-called Microworld (i.e. the world of submillimetric objects), in particular micromanipulation tasks of single objects (artificial or biological) for positioning, characterizing or sorting as well as for industrial micro-assembly. Closed-loop control of the microrobots requires the integration of very small sensors and the use of bulky and expensive instruments for signal processing and real-time operating. Connector technology and integration of the sensors and actuators are also hard problems. We will present a particular need to perform micromanipulation or microassembly tasks in an automatic mode: the force feedback. The different way to make the force feedback will be explained and we will propose different applications. Mainly, we will show the obtained performances using two gages sticked on a piezo electric cantilever. The resolution of the sensor is 1m and the cantilever can produce +/- 100m deflexions and +/- 81mN forces. The performances of this system in a closed loop control to perform a pick and place task will be given. The proposed system is developped as part of the EUPASS project (Evolvable Ultra-Precision ASsembly Systems)