A haptic tele-manipulation environment for a vibration-driven micromechatronic device

In this paper, a novel haptic tele-manipulation environment is presented. This includes an interface between a master haptic mechanism and a slave mechatronic mechanism for biomedical operations. The novelty stems from the fact that the environment´s slave is a micromechatronic device driven by two inexpensive centripetal force vibration micromotors. The unique characteristics and challenges that arise during the haptic micromanipulation of the specific device are described and analyzed. The developed solutions are presented and discussed. The environment employs three input modes and two force control phases, which are described in detail. The haptic tele-manipulation environment is illustrated by several examples. These show that, while the interaction between the haptic mechanism and the vibration driven device is complicated, the micromanipulation of the device can be successful and appear to the operator as simple.