Tactile perceptions of the optical tweezers based micromanipulation
Today, microtechnologies are common practice in the industry. They are generally mass-produced by photolithography with several inherent difficulties. As a result, it is difficult to diagnosis defects in single parts as individual manipulation is complex and not cost-effective. In order to overcome these shortcomings, microrobotics proposes different techniques, either fully automated or teleoperated. Given the complexity of the manipulation task and the required flexibility, it is necessary to involve a human operator in the process. The use of force feedback is a recommended approach to enhance the operator's dexterity. In the case of microscale manipulation, big scaling ratios and specific dynamics are critical for a bilateral coupling schemes. In order to guarantee the stability of such a coupling, advances controllers are used with the secondary effect to reduce the quality of the force information, hence the sensation, fed back to the user. The approach proposed here aims to design a micromanipulation system specifically tailored to overcome these shortcomings, improving the human perception of the manipulation task while still guaranteeing the stability, instead of adapting an existing system to a force feedback scheme. in this prospect, several technical paths and optimizations are investigated: a dedicated contact-less manipulation technique based on optical tweezers, maximization of actuation and sensor workspaces, enhancement of the bandwidth and dynamic performances, development of a robust novel sensor based on event-based vision In the frame of this multidisciplinary study, three experimental setups are constructed in collaboration with specialists in micromanipulation, computer vision and haptic/tactile perceptions.