Development of micro manipulation system with two-finger micro hand

A dexterous micro manipulation system is developed for the application in assembling micro machine, manipulating cell, and micro surgery. We have proposed a concept of a two-finger micro hand, and designed and built two types of hand modules based on parallel mechanisms. In this paper, we mainly discuss the structure of a two-finger micro hand. The structure of the two-finger micro hand is strongly related to the effective work space, or the common work space of two fingers as well as its cooperation control algorithms. We design a structure to be suitable for a two-finger micro hand and made a prototype. Development of useful master device to operate the two-finger micro hand is important issue for the dextrous micro manipulation system. We developed a master device which is operated by one hand. The forefinger and thumb is generally used to manipulate objects by one hand. However, motion of each finger cannot be directly used to move the micro manipulator operational signal. We observed difference between the manipulation by two-finger hand like chopsticks and the manipulation by forefinger and thumb in human hand, and discuss operational algorithm for easy manipulation. By using this system for the micro manipulation, we evaluated effectiveness of the two-finger micro hand. In the actual micro manipulation, we succeeded to pick up, place and rotate a micro glass ball having size of 2 microns. The positioning accuracy is less than 0.1 micron.