Magnetic driven two-finger micro-hand with soft magnetic end-effector for force-controlled stable manipulation in microscale

Dan Liu, Xiaoming Liu*, Pengyun Li, Xiaoqing Tang, Masaru Kojima, Qiang Huang, Tatsuo Arai

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In recent years, micromanipulators have provided the ability to interact with micro-objects in industrial and biomedical fields. However, traditional manipulators still encounter challenges in gaining the force feedback at the micro-scale. In this paper, we present a micronewton force-controlled two-finger microhand with a soft magnetic end-effector for stable grasping. In this system, a home-made electromagnet was used as the driving device to execute micro-objects manipulation. There were two soft end-effectors with diameters of 300 µm. One was a fixed end-effector that was only made of hydrogel, and the other one was a magnetic end-effector that contained a uniform mixture of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and paramagnetic particles. The magnetic force on the soft magnetic end-effector was calibrated using an atomic force microscopy (AFM) probe. The performance tests demonstrated that the magnetically driven soft microhand had a grasping range of 0–260 µm, which allowed a clamping force with a resolution of 0.48 µN. The stable grasping capability of the magnetically driven soft microhand was validated by grasping different sized microbeads, transport under different velocities, and assembly of microbeads. The proposed system enables force-controlled manipulation, and we believe it has great potential in biological and industrial micromanipulation.

Original languageEnglish
Article number410
JournalMicromachines
Volume12
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2021

Keywords

  • Force-controlled
  • Magnetically driven
  • Micromanipulation
  • Micronewton
  • Stable grasping

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