Manipulation of tapered optical fibers

Tapered optical fibers are difficult to handle when they have a diameter below 15 micrometers. Given the fragility of tapered region, an automatic mechanism to handle will assure that the optical fiber will not be broken because of shearing stress induced by manipulating if manually. In this work, we propose a design methodology for an automatic manipulator of tapered optical fibers. The result is a robotic prototype constructed using an educational robotics platform. We show how to deal with the interactions of the different elements of the devise used to taper standard optical fibers. We have analyzed all thus interactions between these elements and the robotic subsystems in order to achieve a modular design. The design methodology used for this purpose, includes tools for modeling the working environment like Google SketchUp and tools for CAD available to model the robotic subsystems like MLCAD. In this way, we can specify a set of modular mechanisms integrating the robotic manipulator for tapered optical fibers. We have performed tests of the built prototype in a mock up environment. A second advantage of the proposed methodology is the possibility of doing test in virtual environments by using the simulation capabilities of available tools.