Micro-nano integration via hybrid control of multiscale manipulators

Successful commercialization of Nanosystems based devices largely depends on the development of manufacturing tools and strategies that address micro and nanoscale integration challenges at systems level. The present work brings out some of the challenges involved in accomplishing this, and presents both hardware and software based strategies used to accomplish this integration. Assembly at the nanoscale demands ultra high precision and involves physical effects vastly different from other scales. In addition to this, the lack of techniques to accomplish simultaneous sensing and manipulation, coupled with slow and bulky metrological equipments such as scanning electron microscopes (SEM) or atomic force microscopes (AFM) make conventional robotics obsolete for micro-nano integration. The integration strategy presented in this paper involves using microrobots to overcome these challenges and implements a new type of control scheme applicable to micro/nanorobotics. This novel and scalable hybrid control has been configured keeping in mind the (i) precision requirements, (ii) tolerance budgets, (iii) sensor field and workspace, and (iv) surface effects. This control scheme is designed to optimize assembly yield and the cycle time.