Development and visual servo control of an electromagnetic actuated micromanipulation system

An electromagnetic actuated micromanipulation system is proposed in this paper. To perform micromanipulation tasks, a three translational degrees of freedom (DOF) micro-manipulator and a translational 2-DOF micropositioner are designed. Structures of the micromanipulator and micropositioner are illustrated and their decoupling performances are verified by finite element analysis. To construct a visual servo control architecture, image processing based on template matching algorithm is developed. At the same time, sub-pixel image processing method is introduced to improve the positioning accuracy. Preliminary experiments are carried out to evaluate the stroke of the micromanipulator and micropositioner. Closed-loop experiments based on PID controller are conducted, and automatic picking up and placing down of a glass micro-sphere is successfully performed. The performances and feasibility in precision micromanipulation applications of the developed system are well verified and demonstrated.