Pick and Place of Hard Disk Media using Electrostatic Levitation

This paper focuses on a practical application of handling contact sensitive objects such as silicon wafers or hard disk media without any contact using electrostatic levitation. Stable electrostatic levitation can be realized by controlling an electrostatic force on the basis of measured suspension air gaps. Two control approaches, namely centralized and decentralized control and the influence of an integrator in the controller, are discussed with regard to the specific tasks of Pick Up and Place. The final goal is to realize a handling tool that allows human operators to perform these object handling tasks. In this paper a linear motor is used to perform the pick up and place task to allow a controllable and reproducible motion. The experimental results show a stable pick up and place motion, where placing is realized without any external control commands.