Design and analysis of 6 DOF handheld micromanipulator

This paper presents the design and analysis of a handheld manipulator for vitreoretinal microsurgery and other biomedical applications. The design involves a parallel micromanipulator utilizing six piezoelectric linear actuators, combining compactness with a large range of motion and relatively high stiffness. Given the available force of the actuators, the overall dimension of the micromanipulator was optimized considering realistic external loads on a remote center of motion representing the point of expected contact with the sclera of the eye during microsurgery. Based on optimization and workspace analysis, a benchtop version of the micromanipulator was built with a base diameter of 25 mm and a height of 50 mm. It provides a hemispherical workspace of 4.0 mm diameter at the tool tip. The manipulation performance of the constructed manipulator was measured under a lateral load applied at the remote center of motion. The micromanipulator tolerated side loads up to 200 mN.