Incorporating in-situ force sensing capabilities in a magnetic microrobot

This paper presents the preliminary design of a micro force sensing mobile microrobot. The design consists of a planar, vision-based micro force sensor end-effector, while the microrobot body is made from a nickel magnetic layer driven by an exterior magnetic field. With a known stiffness, the manipulation forces can be determined from observing the deformation of the end-effector through a CCD camera attached to an optical microscope. After analyzing and calibrating the stiffness of a micromachined prototype, manipulation tests are conducted to verify this microrobot prototype is indeed capable of in situ force sensing while performing a manipulation task. This concept can be scaled down further for next generation designs targeting real biomedical applications on microscale.