Optical Manipulation of Multiple Groups of Microobjects Using Robotic Tweezers

Haghighi, R.; Cheah, C.C.

Micromanipulation has received increasing attention from robotics researchers due to its wide applications in the manipulation of microobjects like biological cells and Bio-MEMS components. The demand for accurate and precise manipulation of microobjects opens up new challenges in automation of micromanipulation tasks. In this paper, we present a concurrent framework for optical manipulation of multiple groups of microobjects using robotic tweezers. The proposed framework is based on laser-stage coordination control and consists of two concurrent subschemes: 1) local coordination achieved by asynchronous manipulation of multiple groups of microobjects using laser beams and 2) global coordination achieved by manipulation of whole groups using a motorized stage. Unlike existing methods that are limited to the manipulation of a single microobject or a single group of microobjects, the proposed method considers concurrent laser-stage coordination of multiple groups of microobjects, which enhances the capability and flexibility in micromanipulation tasks. In addition, we introduce a unified social interaction function to achieve various cellular behaviors. A mathematical formulation is provided and stability analysis is presented. Using the proposed method, we are able to manipulate multiple groups of microobjects to construct time-varying microformations. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed method.

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