The advantages of miniaturisation, e.g. low masses, low power consumption and small dimensions open new fields of applications for powerful micro actuators in areas dealing with particular environmental conditions like ultra high vacuum or wide temperature ranges. In fact these kinds of applications are mostly challenging positioning tasks, such as the sensitive movement or exact adjustment of ...

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMs) are Combination of electrical and mechanical components in Micron dimensions. In recent years, holding, actuating methods and handling of MEMs components such as microgripper, microsensors and etc. have been deeply studied. Microgrippers for handling, positioning and assembling of micro components are very useful so that for clamping need actuation create...

A novel self-assembled, surface-micromachined micro-XYZ stage with large displacements and fine positioning accuracy has been demonstrated on Si microoptical bench for optical scanning/alignment applications. Continuous lateral scanning up to 120 pm and vertical scanning up to 250 pm have been achieved with integrated scratch drive actuators (SDA), which have step resolutions of 27 nm. The X Y ...

This paper applies a combined precision stage to fabricate micro-structures by two-photon polymerization (TPP). The combined stage consists of PZT and stepper-motor stages to achieve precision positioning in long displacements. First, we derive the models of the stages by identification experiments. Second, we apply robust loop-shaping techniques to improve the positioning performance of the st...

Manipulation of biological cells becomes increasingly important in biomedical engineering to address challenge issues in cell-cell interaction, drug discovery, and tissue engineering. Significant demand for both accuracy and productivity in cell manipulation highlights the need for automated cell transportation with integrated robotics and micro/nano manipulation technologies. Optical tweezers,...

After 9/11 there has been special interests in 3D models to represent internal structures of micro-scale environment (built-in urban areas), in order to understand and analyze human movements under such emergency situations in micro-scale environment. With comparing to 2D analysis, the 3D searching operation should deal with complex geometric computational problems involves with defining spatia...

We propose a new robotic system for positioning payloads such as pickoff mirrors, fibres or deployable IFUs on telescope focal planes. Based on a combination of concepts used in existing fibre positioning systems, the proposed system retains the advantages of each type of existing positioner, while eliminating many of the disadvantages. It employs micro-robotic actuators to independently and si...

The concept of using the steering angle sensor to enhance positioning accuracy during Global Positioning System (GPS) outages is the focus of this article. This development of a GPS Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems Inertial Measurement Unit (MEMS IMU) steering angle sensor vehicular positioning system is discussed in detail including the error dynamics and measurement models as well as integrat...

Nano-positioning technology has been widely used in many fields, such as microelectronics, optical engineering, and micro manufacturing. This paper presents a one-dimensional (1D) nano-positioning system, adopting a piezoelectric ceramic (PZT) actuator and a multi-objective topological optimal structure. The combination of a nano-positioning stage and a feedback capacitive comb sensor has been ...

Magnetic shape memory alloys (MSM alloys), a new kind of smart materials, have become a potential candidate in many engineering fields. MSMs have the advantage of bearing a huge strain, much larger than other materials. In addition, they also have fast response. These characteristics make MSM a good choice in micro engineering. However, MSMs display the obvious hysteresis phenomenon of nonlinea...