Experimental Study of Micromanipulation System with Multi-Fingered Structure

With developments of micro-manipulation and micro-assembly, there is a growing demand for micro-grippers which are able to overcome the adhesion forces to pick up and release micro-objects effectively. This paper presents a separate-structured triple-finger gripper. Each finger is driven by piezoelectric (PZT) transducer. The gripper's end effectors are replaceable, so different end effectors can be used to adjust various targets with different shapes and sizes. The three fingers were assembled on an adjustable pedestal, so this gripper is able to achieve a precise clamping range. In the experiments, microspheres of different materials with diameters ranging from $10\ \boldsymbol{\mu} \mathbf{m}$ to $800\ \boldsymbol{\mu} \mathbf{m}$ were picked and released with more than 85% success rate. The applications of micro-assembly and super-resolution imaging were shown in the gripping experiments, which demonstrate important practical significance of this gripper. This triple-finger gripper has simple machining processes, high flexibility, and low cost.