A tele-microrobot for manipulation and dynamic mechanical testing of single living cells

A high-performance parallel-drive microrobot has been developed for manipulation, surgery, and dynamic mechanical testing of single living muscle cells. The microrobot has two limbs which more in overlapping spherical workspaces of 1 mm diameter with minimum open-loop and closed-loop movements of 1 nm and 10 nm, respectively. Under nonlinear model-based control the limbs can move at up to 2 m/s relative to each other. Ferroelectric polymer microgrippers have been fabricated to facilitate cell manipulation. The microrobot has a three-dimensional laser vision system with a resolution of 50 to 100 nm. Volume images containing magnitude, phase, polarization, and spectral information can be acquired. The microrobot incorporates facilities to keep single living cells alive for long periods. A macro version of the microrobot has been built to allow force-reflecting teleoperation of the microrobot. The tele-microrobot system constitutes a mechanical microscope in which microscopic objects can be felt. The macro-interface also enables the operator to feel mechanical continuum models. A parallel computation and control computer has been designed to meet the substantial numerical requirements of the tele-microrobot system