Development of Automated Robotic Microassembly for Three-dimensional Microsystems

Robotic microassembly is a process to leverage intelligent micro-robotic technologies to manipulate and assemble three-dimensional complex micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) from a set of simple-functional microparts or subsystems. As the development of micro and nano-technologies has progressed in recent years, complex and highly integrated micro-devices are required. Microassembly will certainly play an important role in the fabrication of the next generation of MEMS devices. This work provides advances in robotic microassembly of complex three-dimensional MEMS devices. The following key technologies in robotic microassembly are studied in this research: (i) the design of micro-fasteners with high accuracy, high mechanical strength, and reliable electrical connection, (ii) the development of a microassembly strategy that permits the manipulation of microparts with multiple degrees of freedom (DOFs) and high accuracy, (iii) fully automated microassembly based on computer vision, (iv) micro-force sensor design for microassembly. An adhesive mechanical micro-fastener is developed to assemble micro-devices. Hybrid microassembly strategy, which consists of pick-and-place and pushing-based manipulations, is employed to assemble three-dimensional micro-devices with high flexibility and high accuracy. Novel three-dimensional rotary MEMS mirrors have been successfully assembled using the proposed micro-fastener and manipulation strategy. Fully automatic pick-and-place microassembly is successfully developed based on visual servo control. A vision-based contact sensor is developed and applied to automatic micro-joining tasks. Experimental results show that automatic microassembly has achieved sub-micron accuracy, high efficiency, and high success rate. This work has provided an effective approach to construct the next generation of MEMS devices with high performance, high efficiency, and low cost.Ph