Nanohandling automation as an emerging industrial technology

Automated robot-based nanomanipulation is one of the key challenges of microsystem technology and nanotechnology, which has recently been addressed by a rising number of R&D groups and companies all over the world. Controlled, reproducible assembly processes on the nanoscale will enable high-throughput manufacturing of revolutionary products and open up new application fields. The ultimate goal of these research activities is the development of automated nanomanipulation processes to build a bridge between existing precise handling strategies for micro- and nanoscale objects and aspired high-throughput fabrication of micro- and nanosystems. Despite the growing interest in automated nanomanipulation, there is hardly any work that treats this research in a coherent and comprehensive way. This paper is an attempt to provide an overview over some important issues in this rapidly expanding technology.