Micropositioning of a weakly calibrated microassembly system using coarse-to-fine visual servoing strategies

This paper presents a novel visual servoing framework for micropositioning in three dimensions for assembly and packaging of hybrid microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The framework incorporates a supervisory logic-based controller that selects feedback from multiple visual sensors in order to execute a microassembly task. The introduction of a visual sensor array allows the motion of microassembly tasks to be controlled globally with a wide angle view at the beginning of the task. Then a high precision view is used for fine motion control at the end of the task. In addition, a depth-from-focus technique is used to visually servo along the optical axis, providing the ability to perform full three-dimensional (3-D) micropositioning under visual control. The supervisory logic-based controller selects the relevant sensor and tracking strategy to be used at a particular stage in the assembly process, allowing the system to take full advantage of the individual sensor's attributes such as field-of-view, resolution, and depth-of-field. The combination of robust visual tracking and depth estimation within a supervisory control architecture is used to perform high-speed, automatic microinsertions in three dimensions. Experimental results are presented for a micro insertion task performed under this framework in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach in high precision assembly of MEMS. Results demonstrate that a relative parts placement repeatable to 2 /spl mu/m in XY and 10 /spl mu/m in Z is possible without the use of costly vibration isolation equipment and thermal management systems.