Automated Robotic Microassembly of Flexible Optical Components

This paper studies the fabrication of hybrid microcomponents through automated robotic microassembly. The robotic station used for the microassembly is presented in this paper and its use for the assembly of flexible optical microcomponents is done as a case study. Fully automated microassembly is done for better repeatability and accuracy of the tasks and to reduce the time cycle. For this reason, two complementary techniques are proposed and presented in this paper. The first technique consists of automated manipulation and insertion tasks using stereovision CAD-model based visual tracking. The second technique has been performed using hybrid force/position control and enable to perform grasping, guiding and releasing tasks in less than 1 s despite microscale specificities. These specificities are mainly manifested by the predominance of surface forces, the difficulty of integration sensors at this scale, the very small inertia of microcomponents and their high dynamics and the lack of precise models.