In biomedical engineering and microelectronics, microgrippers have been widely used for micromanipulation. Various reports have been made on the gripping of objects using a piezo-driven microgripper. In these studies, the gripping operation was performed by switching the controller before and after contact with the object. However, the force transmission was not achieved using these conventional methods. Therefore, these conventional methods may result in damage to the object. For the realization of safety micromanipulation, perceiving the force feedback of the microgripper is one of the important technologies. Therefore, this study proposed a micro–macro bilateral control using a piezo-driven microgripper. For the bilateral control in the microgripper, the position and contact force were estimated using strain gauges. Additionally, this study developed the hysteresis compensator based on an observer theory. The hysteresis characteristics caused by the piezoelectric actuator were compensated as part of the disturbance. The usefulness of the bilateral control in the microgripper was confirmed from the experimental results.
Nakamura et al. (Thu,) studied this question.