Design and Characterization of a 16-DOFs Nanorobotic Manipulation System for Repetitive and Pre-Programmable Tasks

Accuracy and efficiency for nanomanipulation inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM) remain a major concern for researchers. So far, various methods have been proposed based on visual servo control. Almost all of them require a proper tracking speed prior to driving the manipulators to keep end effectors and samples in the field of view. In this study, we proposed a speed adaptive method based on pixels under different magnifications to obtain tracking speed automatically. A nanorobotic manipulation system with 16 DOFs was designed to verify the proposed speed adaptive method. This system is configured under an SEM composed of four basic manipulator units. Feasibility of this method is shown by performing route tracking in the proposed G-code and point-driven mode. As a general-purposed manipulation process, the proposed speed adaptive method and the drive modes will enable a variety of applications in such fields such as nanofabrication, assembly, electrical and mechanical characterization of low dimensional functional materials.